President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed the National Road Traffic Amendment Bill into law, introducing sweeping reforms aimed at improving road safety and ensuring the integrity of South Africa’s traffic management systems.
This includes the fitness of drivers and vehicles, the transportation of certain dangerous goods, the general speed limit and the integrity of the issuing of vehicle and driver’s licenses.
In a statement on Thursday, the Presidency said the Bill gives effect to the National Road Safety Strategy, which has five pillars: road safety management; safer roads and mobility; safer vehicles; safer road users, and post-crash response.
The newly signed legislation amends the National Road Traffic Act of 1996 with the following provisions:
- Suspension and cancellation of registration: Allows for the suspension or cancellation of the registration of examiners for driving licences or vehicle examiners.
- Regulation of centres and stakeholders: Mandates the registration and grading of driving licence testing centres and training centres. Requires the registration and inspection of various stakeholders involved in manufacturing, supplying, and fitting number plates, weighbridge facilities, and microdots.
- New offences: The law introduces various new offences related to learner’s licences and provides for registration and grading of driving schools and their instructors. It includes fraud as a listed offence for assisting a driving licence applicant in committing violations.
- Financial disqualification for officials: The law disqualifies vehicle examiners with direct or indirect financial interests in businesses such as manufacturing, selling, repairing, or modifying motor vehicles. Examiners will also be disqualified if they have or have acquired such financial interest through their spouse or partner. Similarly, a traffic officer, reserve traffic warden, traffic warden or National Traffic Information System (NaTIS) officials are now disqualified if they have or acquired, or through their spouse or partner, have acquired a direct or indirect financial interest in a road transport services business.
- Disciplinary measures: Examiners, traffic officers, and licence inspectors may face suspension or deregistration for convictions under the Criminal Procedure Act. These sanctions apply also to examiners, officers and inspectors who have or a direct or indirect financial interest in a variety of businesses including a driving school, road transport services business or the manufacturing of motor vehicles.
- Registration requirements: The law further calls for the registration of persons who build or modify vehicle bodies on chassis and chassis-cabs or import new buses or midibuses.
- Emergency services: The Bill signed by the President obliges emergency services to immediately respond to a road incident and render all necessary services as prescribed. “Emergency services” are defined as including emergency medical services provided by an organ of state or private body for private use, as well as emergency medical services provided by the Department responsible for health services. The law also stipulates that the driver of an emergency vehicle who drives such a vehicle in the course of their duties, or a person driving a vehicle while responding to a disaster in terms of the Disaster Management Act may not exceed a speed of 20km/h through an intersection.
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