Drivers who are repeatedly bust for breaking road rules in KwaZulu-Natal could be arrested, even if their fines are paid up, as authorities try to shock and embarrass drivers into driving safely.
This is the latest plan from Transport MEC Willies Mchunu, who said in his budget speech to the legislature in Pietermaritzburg on Friday that there had to be tougher sanctions for repeat traffic offenders.
What he wants is traffic officers, working with the police, knocking on the doors of drivers’ homes and arresting repeat offenders in front of their families.
“We don’t want transgressors getting away with just a fine because, often, they are repeat offenders who can afford to pay fines,” Mchunu said, suggesting that fines were a minor irritation for some who blatantly and repeatedly ignored traffic rules.
The transport department, with the justice department, was looking into how they could arrest individuals who were always in trouble with traffic police, he said.
The department had also established a traffic fine tracking task team to deal with those motorists who evaded paying their fines and kept repeating offences, he said.
These included tourists from outside the province who left without paying their fines.
They would be “surprised” to be arrested when they returned, Mchunu said.
“This task team will execute warrants of arrest at the homes, workplaces and or any other place where the offender can be found,” he said.
Mchunu told the legislature that the budget for his department was R8.066 billion. Of this, 72 percent (R5.8 billion) was for infrastructure.
Meanwhile, local emergency workers reported that 16 people had died on the province’s roads at the weekend.
In one of the worst accidents, eight people died when a minibus taxi travelling from Durban to Highflats, near Ixopo, in southern KZN, collided with a truck on the R612 on Friday – The Mercury