A groundbreaking national initiative to name and shame convicted drunk drivers was halted at the 11th hour on Thursday – when the Road Traffic Management Corporation refused to go ahead with it.
The award-winning LeadSA campaign was started 18 months ago in the Western Cape, in collaboration with the Cape Argus newspaper. It was credited as a huge deterrent in the war against drunken driving in the Western Cape.
The project was suspended in June over concerns that not all courts were reporting their cases.
This had been resolved and the project was about to be rolled out nationally on Friday.
However, despite the endorsement by the Justice Department, the RTMC announced that it was unwilling to provide LeadSA with information that should be freely available to the public.
LeadSA activist Yusuf Abramjee said: “We are disappointed at the lack of willingness by the RTMC to partner with us on something that will most certainly create safer roads.” – Cape Argus
Newsletter note: If you use Gmail to read IOL's newsletters , note that Google is rolling out a new tabbed inbox that filters your mail into 5 separate tabs - Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. IOL emails will probably be sent to the “Promotions” tab instead of the “Primary” tab. If you don't want it that way, drag the newsletter from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab. An alert will pop up. Click “yes” and your newsletters will continue to go to your Primary inbox.