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THANK YOU for your series of articles on Dangerous Goods transport in a recent issue of FleetWatch . I have the thankless task of chairing a public committee overseeing CAIA's Responsible Care programme. Time and again we face complaints that the chemical industry is not doing enough and every time the problems are found to lie in the application of the law. Yes, we have excellent laws, but they are useless unless the authorities put in place the means of enforcing them. Some of those "means" must be in trained people and every time we have looked, the TETA gets in the way of training instead of assisting it.

You correctly identified the way in which the legislative process is being circumvented by reference to SANS standards. There is something wrong when laws can be changed by some petty official working in a back office in Pretoria and you suddenly find yourself breaking the law with which you had gone to great lengths to comply. Any Regulations in terms of the Act should refer to specific versions of the Standards, not the Standard in general. Then the incorporation of any later standard would require a change in the Regulations, which would have to be promulgated in the normal way.

A problem you did not identify was what happens further down the distribution chain. Many operators transporting large quantities of dangerous goods do an excellent job of driver training, truck maintenance, labelling and all the other things that go into safe transport of Dangerous Goods. Many subscribe to the Responsible Care programme. But, the further down the distribution chain you go, the less responsible is the handling of dangerous goods. A few tins of litres of a potent insecticide can pose a significant threat to hundreds of lives.

The only solution we have so far identified is to make the consignor responsible. If you are going to make a living shipping dangerous goods around the place, you cannot abdicate your responsibility to an 'ou in a bakkie'! Keep up the good work!

(Dr) Philip Lloyd
Industrial & Petrochemical Consultants - Western Cape

Editor's Comment: 
Many thanks for your most thought provoking letter. You touch on many points: TETA, lack of enforcement and the fact that as you go down the distribution chain, so too does the risk increase due to irresponsible practices. You then point to a solution in this 'lower' arena as being to make the consignor responsible. Each one of these points needs in-depth focus which we don't have the space to do here. However, the main thing that stands out for me is the sense of frustration your letter seems to impart. I know that the CAIA's Responsible Care programme is a superb one and it must be extremely frustrating to go to all the trouble of implementing responsible actions only to find that you're still getting flak due to no fault of your own but rather due to a lack of enforcement. When is this government going to sit up and take notice that we are all crying out for strict enforcement of the laws that we have in place. We want Zero Tolerance to extend from KwaZuluNatal and embrace the entire country. I, for one, am getting so 'gatvol' of the lawlessness on our roads and the authorities seem to just keep letting it go by. It is a blight on the names of the operators who are doing their best to do things right and it is a blight on the good name of the industry as well as the overall reputation of this country as a safe place in which to live and operate. See the next letter as well... 

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WHILE TRAVELLING through Krugersdorp on Sunday November 13, I watched a funeral convoy, escorted by two Metro Police vehicles, breaking the law. It was not the convoy that was at fault but two elements within the convoy - and the police escorts. The two lawbreakers were:

1. A Nissan 1400 bakkie which formed part of the entourage. There were three passengers in the front seat and thirteen on the back. The bakkie is rated at about half a ton payload capacity but there must have been over 1 200kg of people on board.
2. Also in the convoy, an ancient Dyna 2 litre petrol MCV. If my memory serves me right, this has a maximum payload just short of two tons. The front seat was packed, maybe four people. The very low (300mm?) dropside body was bulging with between 35 to 40 seated and standing passengers. This equates to about 3 200kg if I use the government's calculation of 75kg per person.

In terms of the law, these vehicles were dangerously overloaded - with humans not cargo - and the law regarding the persons allowed on the back of an open vehicle was completely ignored. 

The Metro Police staff members (I decline to call them officers as officers are people of integrity) are guilty of gross dereliction of duty. They are also party to a charge of gross negligence for not preventing the law breakers from travelling on a public road and are an embarrassing danger to society.

The sad thought about this is: If I had tried to stop these guys, the cops would probably not have known the law and would have either assaulted me or locked me up for obstructing a cop in the course of doing his escorting duty.

Chris Newby-Fraser
Toyota South Africa Motors (Pty) Ltd Truck Division

Editor's Comment: 
Thank you Chris, for not only having the courage to voice your opinion in such a stern way but also for putting your name to that opinion. You are right in hitting out at what you saw on that day. Why? Simply because for those of us who want Zero Tolerance on law transgressors, it is abhorrent when the very people who are supposed to enforce the law choose to ignore the law. There is another side to it and that is that some of those people could have fallen off those two vehicles and been seriously injured or even killed. Apart from the human tragedy, we are already chalking up a R30-biliion a year bill on road accident deaths and injuries. Do we need to add to that bill by such irresponsible actions. But they were travelling slowly in a funeral proseession I hear some people say. So too was a tipper travelling slowly some years back carrying 100 or so people on the back when it rolled. Just over 50 of those people were killed. Zero Tolerance is just that. There is no room for any leeway to be granted. The sooner the cops learn that, the sooner will we bring the 12 000 annual death toll down. 

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November 14, 2005

Mr Jeff Radebe 
Minister of Transport
Private Bag X193
0001 Pretoria

Greetings Minister

On 18 October 2005 an e-mail was sent to the FleetWatch Magazine, and a copy of the letter was also addressed to Jack Webster, the FleetWatch Correspondent on Legislation. These letters were accompanied by a letter from the Road Traffic Management Corporation explaining the establishment of the RTMC. The letter explains the functions of the RTMC and identifies five functions for initial attention. The five functional areas agreed to by the Shareholders' Committee are:

• Training of Traffic Personnel

• Road Traffic Information

• Accident Investigations and Recording

• Communication and Education, and

• Infrastructure Safety Audits

The remaining five functions identified have been deferred for attention at a later date and these are -

• Road Traffic Law Enforcement

• Vehicle Registration and Licensing

• Vehicle and Roadworthiness Testing

• Testing and Licensing of Drivers, and

• Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences

With the utmost respect, the South African general public and the Road Transport Industry have been bitterly complaining about the standard of enforcement of the Road Traffic Legislation for over 25 years and when the four Provincial Road Traffic Ordinances were replaced by the National Road Traffic Act in 1989, South Africa was promised a big improvement in law enforcement. Today, over 16 years later, law enforcement is no better than it was in 1989!

The AARTO Act was first published in the Government Gazette on 26 April 1999 and the Regulations a few months later and in spite of many announcements and promises as to when the effective date would be published, no further progress has been made. Now the RTMC Shareholders' Committee has relegated these two vitally important and urgent functions to receive attention at "A FUTURE DATE".

As National Minister of Transport and a member of the Shareholders' Committee, an urgent appeal is made to you personally to endeavour to persuade the Shareholders' Committee to reconsider the priorities of the functions of the RTMC.

In case it may be of assistance, after being involved with Road Traffic Legislation for several years, we would suggest the following priorities for the ten functional areas of the RTMC -

1. Road Traffic Law Enforcement
2. Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences
3. Training of Road Traffic Personnel
4. Vehicle and Roadworthiness Testing
5. Vehicle Registration and Licensing

To be followed at a later stage by -

6. Testing and Licensing of Drivers
7. Road Traffic Information
8. Communication and Education
9. Accident Investigation and Recording
10. Infrastructure Safety Audits

These priorities are suggested in view of frequent opinion expressed by overseas commentators that the South African Road Traffic Legislation compares favourably with that of international standards, but the standard of enforcement and penalties for transgressions is very much below overseas standards. This gives rise to the ATTITUDE of so many South African drivers and Road Transport Operators toward South African Road Traffic Law and until that attitude changes, an improvement in the Road Traffic standards will not be achieved.

The only way to change this unfortunate attitude is to get law enforcement more efficient and penalties more related to the offences committed.

FleetWatch continues to offer its assistance and co-operation to you and the National Department of Transport.

Yours sincerely,

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