{"id":282159,"date":"2018-11-06T09:37:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T07:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=282159"},"modified":"2018-11-06T09:46:48","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T07:46:48","slug":"plan-for-tougher-punishment-for-drunk-drivers-is-a-joke-legal-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/282159\/plan-for-tougher-punishment-for-drunk-drivers-is-a-joke-legal-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan for tougher punishment for drunk drivers is a joke: legal expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

The plan by authorities to have drunk driving reclassified as a schedule 5 offence is “laughable”, according to legal professor James Grant.<\/p>\n

Reports this past weekend revealed the Road Traffic Management Corp (RTMC)’s plan to push driving under the influence from a schedule 2 offence to a schedule 5 offence, which would place drunk driving in the same \u2018category\u2019 of crimes as rape and murder.<\/p>\n

It also wants arrested drivers to spend at least seven days behind bars before they can be considered for bail.<\/p>\n

The push comes as we head into the festive season, which is a notoriously bad time for motorists in South Africa, where the number of road deaths spike, and cases of DUI also ramp up.<\/p>\n

However, according to Wits professor of criminal law James Grant, the proposed changes make no sense at all and are laughable.<\/p>\n

“It’s frankly laughable,” he said in an interview on 702<\/a><\/strong>, “It so confuses the law, and is so out of touch with what has become accepted when trying to crack down on criminal activity.”<\/p>\n

According to Grant, it is widely known that it is not the extent of punishment, but the certainty of punishment that is most effective in curbing criminal behaviour.<\/p>\n

Further, using the bail system as a form of punishment goes against the whole purpose of the system.<\/p>\n

“The bail system is not a system designed to be used to punish people – in fact it’s expressly designed not to be used that way,” he said. “The RTMC’s proposal is to explicitly use the bail system to punish people.”<\/p>\n

The proposal was more like a scare tactic, akin to asking that the death penalty be reintroduced to combat drunk driving, he said.<\/p>\n

“The only thing that would work is if they trained their officers to take the necessary samples in the required time period and to protect those samples – to get their officers out on the streets,” Grant said.<\/p>\n

“The suggestion that suspicion of drunk driving, or speeding, be placed in the same category as murder or rape has to be regarded as preposterous,” he said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0New strict rules proposed for drunk drivers in South Africa: report<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The plan by authorities to have drunk driving reclassified as a schedule 5 offence is “laughable”, according to legal professor James Grant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":93308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-282159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282181,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282159\/revisions\/282181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}