Western Cape traffic officials will be deploying new technology to identify and sanction habitual traffic offenders this festive season.
Also read: Taxi Strike: City condemns violent protest as SAPS confiscate petrol bombs
This follows the launch of the provincial Department of Transport’s festive traffic safety plan to coincide with the graduation of 99 new traffic officers in Brackenfell.
At the launch, acting Deputy Director Vigie Chetty, said that they would show zero tolerance to drunken drivers, motorists using cellphones while driving, speeding and reckless and negligent driving.
“What we’ve started is a programme called the habitual traffic transgressor program specifically aiming to identify through a collection of data over an 18-month period,” said Chetty. “We pick up behaviour of repetitive drivers that are contravening, be it our speed cameras, through other type of traffic offences, so basically the data that has been collected will create an alert system through a handheld device which our traffic officers are privy to see throughout the province.”
Taxi organisations in the province have also committed to do their bit in an attempt to stop road fatalities this festive season.
“We will also take action by ensuring that when they leave our ranks, we will do vehicle checks,” Santaco provincial Chairperson Mandla Hermanus said at the launch. “We will write down when vehicles leave so that if a vehicle leaves today, that very same vehicle cannot be loading in Cape Town again the following day, because it would mean that the driver dropped off and drove back without resting.”
Meanwhile, taxi associations Cata and Codeta issued an apology to commuters for violent taxi wars that led to the loss of several lives amid conflict over the B-97 route and resulted in the fatal shooting of more than 80 people from 2020 to 2021.
In July 2021, Mobility Minister in the Western Cape Daylin Mitchell authorised the closure of the route.
Last week, Mitchell declared the route open again and handed over operating licences to the associations.
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