MURRAY WILLIAMS
Staff Writer
Motorists who talk on their cellphones or send SMSes while driving are set to face higher fines and even the possibility of jail as part of a new City of Cape Town campaign.
The tough new measures will be introduced when a new traffic bylaw is passed by the council within the next month, after consideration by the transport and safety portfolio committees and the mayoral committee (Mayco).
Mayco safety and security member JP Smith told the Cape Argus: “People talk and drive illegally all the time – incessantly. I have no doubt that people’s ability to drive properly is severely impaired (when using cellphones illegally). A lot of people think they can do just fine. But you see people doing inexplicable things on the road. And when you eventually manage to pass them, you see they’ve got a phone jammed between their neck and shoulder, and you say: ‘That explains it’.”
Smith said the city’s traffic officers and the metro police issued between 1 500 and 3 000 fines a month for illegal cellphone use. “But our fines of R300 are obviously just not enough of a disincentive.”
The first new measure was for the city to ask the justice department’s chief magistrate to increase fines, with specific emphasis on repeat offenders, Smith said. “For the third offence we will ask… for the motorist to be obliged to appear in a traffic court so the magistrate can apply his mind as to an appropriate sentence.”
The road rules governing cellphones are promulgated by the Road Traffic Act. With the new bylaw, around 400 additional ordinary law enforcement officers employed by the city would be able to nail motorists too, Smith said.
The city had even considered authorising traffic officers to confiscate cellphones.
Several drafts of the traffic bylaw contain the words: “(4) The authorised officer must, when confiscating any hand-held communication device, (a) inform the owner of such communication device of the reasons for confiscating and impounding; (b) issue a receipt to the owner of such hand-held communication device, stating the place at which such device may be claimed; and (c) follow all procedures contained in any policy of the city dealing with the confiscation and impoundment of property.”
“We would really like to do that,” Smith said. “People would scream blue murder, but it would instantly make the behaviour go away.”
But he said they had considered various effects of a motorist not having a cellphone, and other logistical difficulties, and decided not to implement the measure – for now.
“We know people use their phones for legitimate emergencies, or breakdowns, for example. We could not deny people the use of their phones in bona fide emergencies,” he said. “In a future draft we can reconsider, and possibly apply, the measure to habitual offenders.”
The section of the new traffic bylaw relating to cellphone use while driving reads, in part:
“38.(1) Subject to any other law, no person shall drive a motor vehicle on a public road
(a) while holding a cellular or mobile telephone or any other communication device in one or both hands or with any other part of the body; (b) while using or operating a cellular or mobile telephone or other communication device unless such a cellular or mobile telephone or other communication device is affixed to the vehicle or is part of the fixture in the vehicle and remains so affixed while being used or operated, or is specially adapted or designed to be affixed to the person of the driver as headgear, and is so used, to enable such driver to use or operate such telephone or communication device without holding it in the manner contemplated in paragraph (a), and remains so affixed while being used or operated.
“(2) For the purposes of this section, (a) the word ‘headgear’ includes a device specially designed or adapted to allow the driver to use a cellular or mobile telephone or other communication device in such a manner that he or she does not hold it in one or both hands or with any other part of the body, and which is connected to the cellular or mobile telephone or other communication device concerned, directly or indirectly, while being fitted to or attached to one or both ears...”