With the festive season around the corner, government has announced that it is looking to make a number of changes to South Africa’s traffic laws.<\/p>\n
These changes are primarily geared to making the country’s roads safer – including much stricter rules around drunk driving and speed limits.<\/p>\n
BusinessTech looked at these planned changes in more detail below.<\/p>\n
Speed limits\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The Department of Transport says that it is reviewing South Africa\u2019s current speed limits.<\/p>\n Department spokesperson Ayanda Allie-Paine said the proposal could see the baseline top speeds across the country\u2019s roads reduced by 20km\/h.<\/p>\n This would effectively drop the speed limit on the country\u2019s highways from 120km\/h to 100km\/h, while the top speeds on main roads would drop from 100km\/h to 80km\/h.<\/p>\n Speeds in residential areas would decrease from\u00a060km\/h to 40km\/h.<\/p>\n \u201cOur road safety strategy has considered all these factors. Legislation is being reviewed to address and bring in place an edifice of various interventions to respond adequately to the challenge that South Africa is facing,\u201d Allie-Paine said.<\/p>\n \u201cAmong these, a review of the international best practice on speed reductions, as is the case in countries such as Sweden and Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cDue to the unique situation in South Africa, these cannot just be implemented without an impact assessment study,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Drunk driving<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The Department of Transport and the Road Traffic Management Corporation are reviewing South Africa\u2019s drunk driving laws.<\/p>\n They aim to drop the legal blood-alcohol level to 0%, meaning that drivers will not be allowed to drink alcohol and drive at all.<\/p>\n The National Road Traffic Act (NRA) currently differentiates between normal drivers and professional drivers (those drivers who hold professional driving permits).<\/p>\n For normal drivers, the concentration of alcohol in any blood specimen must be less than 0.05 gram per 100 millilitres, and in the case of a professional driver, less than 0.02 gram per 100 millilitres.<\/p>\n Speaking to the\u00a0Weekend Argus, Department of Transport spokesperson Ayanda Allie-Paine said if given the green light, the new proposals will become part of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) system which establishes a new demerit system.<\/p>\n
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