As the tariff sign at almost any toll plaza bluntly shows, a lone rider on a motorcycle pays the same toll as a car and caravan, or a fully-loaded minibus taxi with a trailer. Since the tolls are intended for the maintenance of the road and heavier vehicles inevitably cause more wear and tear than the much lighter two-wheelers, that's manifestly unfair, and it is the reason why few bikers have any sympathy for toll-road operators.
In fact, when negotiations between Sanral and a riders' coalition over reduced tolls for motorcycles collapsed some years ago, it became commonplace for riders to move quickly through toll plazas without paying (it's called "skieting") or avoid toll roads altogether.
But I live in the Cape, where the situation is a little different. As of now, we have only two tolled roads here.
One, the Huguenot Tunnel, was built at huge expense to shorten the tortuous Du Toit's Kloof Pass for commercial hauliers. Bikers automatically go over the top and, any time I use the short cut to avoid bad weather in the pass, I'll happily pay for the privilege - although it still grates me to fork out the same as Oom Piet with his 4x4 beetle-crusher and double-axle caravan.
The other, of course, is Chapman's Peak Drive, a favourite bikers' playground ever since it was opened in the 1920's but which needs constant, careful maintenance because it's built on a loose, shifting mountainside.
The agreement is quite simple: they keep the rocks from falling on my head and I pay them to ride there - and besides, it's the only tolled road in the country that has a reduced tariff for motorcycles.
But now, drivers in Gauteng are to be tolled electronically for every kilometre they travel along some of the region's most important (and most unavoidable) freeways and the system will be rolled out to the rest of the country in the (very) foreseeable future.
The department of transport has even said that it is "too late" for the City of Cape Town to object to having toll plazas on the N1 and N2, thus holding the Mother City to ransom for every bit of fresh produce in our shops and every tourist visiting our winelands - coming and going!
But these are not new roads, built or upgraded at huge expense for our convenience, there are existing roads, paid for with our taxes, and we are already paying a hefty per-kilometre toll for driving on them, which is supposed to provide for their upkeep.
Out of the approximately R10 we pay for every litre of fuel, R1.77 goes to the department of transport as a fuel levy to pay for the maintenance and improvement of our roads.
Plus, every year, a sizable percentage of your vehicle's registration fee goes to the provincial roads department, for the same purpose.
It costs R168 a year to licence the motorcycle that takes me to work and back every day. R36 of that is an administration fee and R16.21 is VAT, the rest is road toll.
The bike returns an average of 6.7 litres/100km and I ride about 15 000km a year, averaged over five years. Totalled up, that means I'm already being tolled just under 12c per kilometre, whether I'm riding on an immaculately manicured new freeway or a rutted gravel back road.
And now you want me to pay another 24c per kilometre to travel on already-paid-for roads, most of which will go straight to Austria. That's not road maintenance, that's highway robbery!