Editor
LAST week my son was T-boned by a taxi – a taxi who crossed a solid barrier line and was speeding down Umhlanga Rocks Drive on the wrong side, facing oncoming traffic, when he collided with my son, who was legitimately turning right into the Manors. It is not possible to drive five kilometres in any South African town and not witness minibus taxis driving straight through red robots, stopping in the middle of traffic circles to offload passengers, hooting continuously, stopping on red lines, cutting off other drivers, et cetera.
Surely, if taxi drivers do not have the decency or intellectual ability to treat other road users with courtesy and simply obey the law, on their own accord, they must be forced to do so? Our minister of law and order should be replaced with someone competent enough to acknowledge the current chaos on our roads and to put a stop to it, immediately, simply by enforcing the traffic laws.
If our traffic officers cannot discipline our taxi drivers, here is a suggestion: why not allow the SA public to provide the evidence needed to convict all drivers who disregard the law? Its simple, and it works in the UK. If a member of the public witnesses a traffic violation, they simply record it with their cellphones or a digital camera mounted in their car. What better proof to forward to the traffic authorities to be used to prosecute the perpetrator? Thousands of violators have been convicted in the courts of England via the perfect evidence of a recording.
Make it a simple procedure: a member of the public records a violation, e-mails or WhatsApp it to a dedicated e-mail or WhatsApp number where 100 traffic department personnel are employed to process the recordings, and proceed with a legal summons to convict the violator. Come on, SA government! Let’s make SA roads safe once again!
Derek Krummeck
Umhlanga
