Traffic Laws

The Witness: "Traffic laws
27 Mar 2009"
The Editor

DRIVING on the roads of Pietermaritzburg is hazardous and unpleasant. A growing minority of drivers shows scant regard for other vehicles, barging into queues, jumping red traffic lights, exceeding the speed limit and failing to observe a safe following distance.

Law-abiding motorists will have watched recent coverage of the activity of Johannesburg’s metro police with fascination. The true meaning of zero-tolerance towards traffic violations has become very clear: offending drivers have been arrested on the spot and their vehicles towed away and impounded. Many of them, predictably, have been taxis.

Johannesburg’s police were recently placed under new management and a fresh and uncompromising broom is obviously at work. Reckless disregard for the rules of the road can mean the difference between life and death.

Is it too much to hope that such determination to root out dangerous driving might yet be applied to the streets of the City of Choice?