Drive like lightning, crash like thunder

Your editorial “Time to get serious about needless, preventable road deaths” (December 23) warrants a response.

Practical measures to curb the carnage on our roads such as the blitz on drunk driving must be welcomed. However, the proposal that I, at age 70, should be retested after having driven safely for 45 years must be the wackiest ever from the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC). We are already inconvenienced by having to renew our driver’s licence and firearm licence every five years, and the cost keeps escalating. One can only imagine the logistical nightmare if drivers are expected to take a test every five years.

I trust that transport minister Blade Nzimande will throw out this ludicrous proposal of retesting the drivers of private vehicles. By all means, retest our public transport drivers, beginning with our taxi industry. My domestic worker from Soweto is terrified to take a taxi when it rains because on two occasions, she escaped serious injury when the taxi she was riding in was involved in a crash in wet weather. Some of these drivers have no sense of how a vehicle behaves in wet weather.

There is no magic wand to change driver behaviour overnight, because we are a lawless society and this manifests itself in road rage, speeding and unsociable behaviour on the roads. The public has yet to see the might of the law come down on drinking in public, which, for example, is common in the vicinity of the two liquor stores in Parkmore, a suburb of Sandton where I live. What about motorists caught speeding at 200km/h? I did not see any name or photo with the vague reports in the media recently. The day the RTMC jails such drivers, suspends their licences for life and confiscates their vehicles is the day we’ll start to see a change in attitudes.

And finally, my message to the government is to introduce road safety in the school curriculum if it hasn’t done so already. I recall it was part of my “colonial” school education in the early 1960s when we had to purchase a booklet called “The Highway Code of South Africa”, and one favourite question in the health education exam was to complete the saying “If you drive like lightning, …”. The answer, of course, was “you will crash like thunder”. This message was imprinted in our minds at primary school level.

Harry Sewlall, Parkmore

Traffic authorities don’t have a clue

The RTMC has come up with a five-point plan to stop people killing each other on the roads. Brilliant.

They haven’t got a clue how to manage the existing laws, so how on earth are they going to manage new ones? Retest licences every five years? You must be joking! Confine newly licensed drivers to a limited kilometre range in their first year of driving? By doing what, putting leg irons on the driver, with a tracking monitor attached? Hire proficient drivers — if there are any — to accompany novices for the first six months after licensing? Pull the other one. This moronic and unenforceable garbage that purports to be the answer to our problem goes on and on.

This is the exact reason we have death on our roads. The people responsible for traffic management do not have a clue what is going on. If we’re going to stop the carnage, we have to put someone in charge who has the capability and the manpower to enforce the existing laws. That would cut the death toll in half almost immediately. Currently, apart from dysfunctional top management, we seem to have two kinds of traffic enforcement officers in this country; the most common one is the yellow box that sits on top of a pole next to the road. The other is an obese excuse for a law-enforcement officer, who drives a filthy clapped-out vehicle, doesn’t wear a seatbelt, talks on their cellphone while driving and solicits “cooldrink money” from law-breaking drivers.

We will never sort out the problem until we have the right people in charge — as is the case for everything else in this sadly broken country.

Pat McKrill, Cato Ridge

Pleading for a decent traffic force

I read “Bold move to take deaths off SA roads“(December 23) with disdain and frustration.

Those who cause accidents drive through red robots as there is no rule of law, drive unroadworthy vehicles as there is no rule of law, drive on the wrong side of the road as there is no rule of law, drive drunk and drive aggressively and with excessive speed as there are no lawabiding traffic officers.

The taxi associations are the law. They get away with murder. They will not allow professional driving permits — too many will not succeed.

Traffic officers do not apply the law but apply their hands for a gift.

Please can we just create a law-abiding traffic force? That’s how deaths will be reduced. Use a points system. We don’t need another income-driven system for the fat cats on the gravy train.

Charmaine Allen, Sunninghill

SA’s future is in God’s hands

Just when I thought there’s light at the end of the tunnel after reading Ronald Lamola's article (December 9), Justice Malala in

“Ten months is not enough to undo 10 years of misrule — but just how long is this going to take?” (December 23) removes all hope! The ANC is indeed beyond redemption and has itself to blame.

Malala is a seasoned, credible columnist. SA’s future is literally in God’s hands. This is my last take at opining about our politics. I will just read the papers, view news bulletins and listen to them on radio. But I must say, the Sunday Times’ “Insight” has insight.

MB Seitisho, Phuthaditjhaba.

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