South African government putting revenue ahead of road safety

Eye tests are a complete waste of time. Just do away with them completely, or mandate them for them for high-risk groups like the elderly or public transport drivers. There's absolutely no need to regularly test the eye sight of the general public.
 
deweyzeph said:
Eye tests are a complete waste of time. Just do away with them completely, or mandate them for them for high-risk groups like the elderly or public transport drivers. There's absolutely no need to regularly test the eye sight of the general public.
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It's the only part I don't really have a problem with. At least that bit makes some sort of sense as to why you'd come back every few years. There's no reason to do it at the actual licensing centre though. Just require that people visit an optometrist every few years and the optometrist uploads the results to the licensing department. If you fail the test you get a requirement to wear your glasses when driving.
 
It's a revenue stream and creates some jobs to make the stats look marginally better. Wins for the government in their mind.

It's a massive pain in the arse, costs money, creates overhead and queues at the traffic department, a tax burden keeping unnecessary people employed and serves no purpose. Nothing but losses for the general public.
 
I'd actually forgotten my license was in my old ID book, and we never renewed that. Apart from the cost to drivers, there is extra staff needed as well as equipment, and the time to stand in yet another queue twice. It is a test that did not work, and there are more important things like actual law enforcement that traffic officials should be doing. Makes me remember too that back in the 1970's and 1980's there was daily traffic law enforcement seen just in my one suburb of Cape Town. Today in the same suburb I never see a traffic official (well, and they7 lost their own traffic department). Centralisation is really not always a better thing.
 
Why did the number of fatalities double? Simple. The previously impoverished majority of our population were allowed to join the economically wealthy masses and could suddenly afford cars.

In 1998, there were approximately 5.5 million registered vehicles on South Africa's roads. By 2020, this number had grown to about 12.7 million registered vehicles.

More cars……exponentially more car crashes.
 
They should close the traffic department as well. They don't even serve as a visible deterrent any more. I sometimes wonder if there still is traffic officers in my town, they're like John Cena: "You can't see me!" And if they decide one day they are working, they come after the easy targets.
 
Why not just do away with drivers licenses completely? Would it really make any difference if everybody was just allowed to drive without a license?
 
Dick Durham said:
Why did the number of fatalities double? Simple. The previously impoverished majority of our population were allowed to join the economically wealthy masses and could suddenly afford cars.

In 1998, there were approximately 5.5 million registered vehicles on South Africa's roads. By 2020, this number had grown to about 12.7 million registered vehicles.

More cars……exponentially more car crashes.
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So nothing to do with corruption at traffic department learner & Driver licence department?

Pretty sure many of the accidents is due to people not knowing road rules or just don't care enough because their no visible traffic officials around.

I mean some think when a traffic light is out they don't need to stop and do observations.
 
welcome to kakistocracy of south africa!
wipe your feet at the door and leave all AK's and WMD and Blood diamonds at the bar.
 
“But South Africa seems to lack the will to hold the corrupt licensing examiners — and their corruptors — accountable for these crimes,” he said.

“By which I mean that it’s strange that hundreds of thousands of 18-year-old licence applicants seem to know how to buy a licence, but SAPS and the Hawks don’t.”
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On that note the K53 doesn't teach safe driving but is hard to pass. Precisely something that enables corruption rather than a system that is hard to corrupt if you can't drive?
 
porchrat said:
It's the only part I don't really have a problem with. At least that bit makes some sort of sense as to why you'd come back every few years. There's no reason to do it at the actual licensing centre though. Just require that people visit an optometrist every few years and the optometrist uploads the results to the licensing department. If you fail the test you get a requirement to wear your glasses when driving.
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Not what the research shows. There isn't much done on the very elderly alone but I wouldn't have a problem if they did a basic competency test every 2 years after 70 instead of just an eye test.
 
I totally agree with this report. We should also consider linking optometry reports to the digital system.
I say this as most people will go for eye tests fairly regularly. I experienced a cataract problem and actually stopped driving a year after my licence was renewed. My license card expired this month, the same month my cataract was removed. This could have been reported 5 years ago, making the cataract removal compulsory before being allowed to drive again.

Another point regarding road accident deaths is that roads are not up to date with traffic. This causes frustration and people not following road rules. The monitoring policing is almost non existent. Perhaps better policing would also help.
 
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