The Road Traffic Management Corporation has announced that it will be stepping up efforts in the ongoing intervention to curb the carnage on South Africa’s roads by implementing an urgent 365-day-a-year intervention plan.
This comes as a response to the many fatal accidents across the country that saw at least 60 people losing their lives in the past week alone.
Yesterday, Acting CEO Gilberto Martins announced the Intelligent Traffic Enforcement Management (ITEM) plan, a national traffic law enforcement programme. He said special focus would be paid to public transport, considering that 80 percent of the population are dependent on public transport. The focus would be on heavy freight vehicles and public transport vehicles such as minibus taxis and buses.
The campaign would be far reaching and effective, with a clear message of zero tolerance.
Martins announced a number of plans with the objective of curbing road accidents and decreasing the number of casualities and injuries. The plan also includes heightening awareness of road traffic safety; increasing the detection and prosecution of critical traffic offences; and inculcating safe road user behaviour, among others.
VISIBLE ENFORCEMENT
“The approach must be professional but vigorous, extensive and decisive. For the plan to be effective, traffic officers have to be on the roads, their visibility is important to fight this,” he said.
This was “implementation on the run”. “We could not wait. From October, we will have 365 days of implementation and operations to fight the carnage on our roads, although this will be heightened during seasonal peaks as well as along identified hazardous locations.
“We need to ensure that traffic enforcement is visible. The only way to detect if a car is roadworthy is by physically inspecting it,” he said.
Apart from issuing notices, enforcement would concentrate on arrests and the impounding of vehicles.
“When a vehicle is impounded and the owner arrives to collect it, he is issued with a notice of all the infringements that need to be addressed and fixed before the vehicle is allowed back on the road. He has to comply with this and then take the vehicle for a roadworthiness test before it can be classified as roadworthy.”
Martins said that together with the National Prosecuting Authority, they were looking into the possibility of placing mobile courts along the identified hazadous routes. Vehicles will be stopped and screened at special roadside checkpoints. -The Star