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August
2000
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Enforce or be Damned
"Corruptissima republicae, plurimae leges" - an observation by the Roman historian, Tacitus, which translated means: "The worse the state, the more laws it has." The arrival
- at last - of the National Road Traffic Regulations 2000 in the
Government Gazette number 6748 - 17 March 2000 - only To compound the problem, the Government is prepared to spend multi-millions in a 'tata-ma-chance' trying to tell the taxi industry how to run it's business when they don't even have the budget to decently enforce this on the roads. "The rule of law is dead - we are living in a 'taxiocracy', said Sunday Times columnist, David Bullard - and he is right. When we view the specter of buses in the Western Cape not being allowed to transport people because the taxis, not the Government, decide on this, then democracy and the law books are a joke. 'Taxiocracy' rules OK?
The TV spectacle of the Minister of Transport fending off reporters on the subject of 10 falsely issued air pilots' licences adds to my daily outrage. I could be on a freeway and get killed from the air by an aircraft dropping out of the sky due to pilot error. But then I immediately feel better with the comforting thought that there are estimated to be well over 600 000 falsely issued drivers' licenses in South Africa. Thank heavens the statistics will not change - I will most likely die on the road due to the antics of an unqualified landcrab!
The fact that the roads are not policed serves to drive down tariff structures because shippers only look at cost and with such an outlook, any old wreck that can carry goods at the lowest price will do. In my suburb, I observe the practice of hiring lowest-cost rubble and refuse removal companies whose trucks are patently unroadworthy to make sure the mess goes away. And as if that weren't bad enough, these trucking wrecks do not make the long journey to designated dumping sites. They choose the nearest patch of open land and pollute the landscape. So the lack of law enforcement also leads to environmental pollution. When it comes to black clouds of diesel smoke, I have never seen any truck or bakkie being pulled off the road. Add the accident rate to smoking exhausts, as well as leaking vehicles, and you soon come to realise that disregard for the law is helping destroy our environment. Pathetic road transport tariffs also forces many trucks to work double shifts into the night where the absence of the law becomes even more obvious. The effect is heightened by the presence of those who would like to evade one of the 1 800 offences listed in the Act. The consequence for all road users is a statistically proven accident rate three to four times higher than during daylight hours. If goods are not hauled at night, there isn't enough turnover to justify being in the business and if one uses the hours of darkness, the risk increases four-fold. Why even be in trucking with these lawless odds against you? Overloading will not go away Effective and efficient law enforcement on our roads will force market segments into adapting and using products that conform to safety parameters intended by legislation. If we really cracked down on overloading, then trailers and bodies would become lighter and the R60-billion required to fix the roads would be reduced. Overloading is not just a heavy truck problem - far too many bakkies are driving our roads at 50% over their rated gross vehicle mass. One glance in the morning traffic at loaded one-tonners with five people on top of the load confirms this. No one stops a wreck of a bakkie speeding along at 140 kph, with passengers perched on the cargo. Why? Because it isn't a taxi - crazy! Why must housewives in my suburb compete for on-road space with articulated dump trucks (ADT's) that are grossly over the legal axle limit of 8 tons on a single axle with single tyres? The law doesn't even know. Welcome to the 'taxiocracy' The taxi industry is judged for the excess number of bodies inside the mini-bus but what the law is missing is the total excess mass including the baggage inside and outside the vehicle. Mini-bus taxis often operate far over their rated GVM, regardless of the number of passengers. Passenger vehicles are generally not weighed for exceeding GVM because bus cargo's (people) become very fractious when diverted to a weighbridge. South African law enforcers who take passenger vehicles aside for testing GVM and axle masses, are risking their lives. David Bullard's comment on the 'taxiocracry' extends further: "It seems to me that, as well as being taxi drivers, they may also justifiably lay claim to being taxidermists - they have well and truly managed to stuff the government." At the core of the taxi debacle is the new so-called midi taxi that the government insists is good for our 'taxiocracy'. The government cannot give us the rule of law and seems to think it can 'market' a way out of the mess of death and destruction. Do they really think taxi operators will behave responsibly with new midi-taxis? The taxi industry is a leading inventor of ways to bend the system and our taxi culture will survive the government's best marketing efforts. On the other hand, if the government did the right thing and tried to govern instead of designing vehicles, they would ensure that all of us, including the taxis, obeyed the great Road Traffic Act. The resultant discipline would let market forces adapt to the most economical solution - perhaps that would be a midi-bus after all, and without the damaging anarchy our 'taxiocracy' inflicts on our gross domestic product. Total contradictions Half our labour force goes to work on the back of a truck. This is allowed under Regulation 247, provided that the body is enclosed for seated passengers up to a height of 350 mm and up to 900 mm for standing passengers. I often see trucking crews seated on pieces of cardboard on the deck of a flat-deck semi-trailer - no sides at all! The law relating to seatbelts is detailed in Regulation 213 (1) to (10). Of course, all of this does not apply to the load body of a truck or bakkie so when a truck carrying 20 Telkom contract workers recently overturned on Van Rhyn's Pass in the Western Cape, 17 people were killed. The Western Cape premier, Gerald Morkel, expressed his shock and concern and summoned Transport MEC, Piet Meyer, who was on an official visit to Worcester, to return immediately. Great stuff, fellows! When I sit in the Gauteng traffic gridlock and look around at the Be'ems and Mercs with the driver strapped into a passenger safety cell, safely behind the latest airbag technology, I wonder how many of their employees are standing on the back of an open truck. Two suggested cures :
Clean up our own backyard As these thoughts close, the early morning news headlines are about the government's approval to spend up to R100-million of taxpayers' money on a military 'peace-keeping' adventure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When I was a schoolboy in the late fifties, the people of the DRC murdered Patrice Lumumba, one of the first premiers. Nothing much has changed there - it seems to have progressively worsened over the past 40 years. As a taxpayer, I would prefer that R100-million is spent on our own backyard and given to Gerald Morkel in the Western Cape to support the Golden Arrow Bus Company instead of toady Laurent Kabila in the DRC. We must have proper law enforcement on our own turf - let the jungle have it's own in the DRC. Conclusion The strongly perceived absence of law outside our homes on the roads promotes hijacking, theft and other crimes. Lack of law enforcement becomes a gradually entrenched culture of civil disobedience and more laws are not what we need. Dr Zuma's anti-cigarette legislation is becoming a wisp of smoke because it takes years to change a cultural thing and there is no one there to enforce it. The absence
of respect for the law is driving young professional wage earners
out of the country. They are taking their intellectual capital and
taxpaying capability elsewhere. The taxi industry does not want
to pay tax and we are losing our taxpayers - taxing problems. Enforce
the law or be damned. |
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There
are times when, as a South African, you take stock of things around
you and, depending on what you are pondering, you either sit back
and smile or you get MAD! Dave Scott, our technical correspondent,
recently took stock of what he sees around him with regard to law
enforcement - and he got mad. Thus, in this article, instead of
his usual gems of information related to various aspects of trucking,
he gives vent to his feelings of frustration and anger and in so
doing, provides some food for thought for all.
serves
to confirm the problems of 2000 years of history. There are estimated
to be over 1 800 offences that can be committed in the Road Traffic
Act, of which only 50 are ever enforced every day in South Africa.
SABS compulsory specifications added to this, with a complex maze
of legality, completes a picture of total mental confusion for a
few underpaid law enforcement officers. 
As
I closed off this column in the evening, it had been a 'normal day'
for South Africans. It had been a day when 1 300 collisions occurred,
27 people had been killed, 137 were seriously injured and the drain
on our economy was R32 million. The TV news, however, broadcast
yet another report on 'Hansiegate' and how incensed the sporting
public is at the few hundred thousand that changed hands for information
and betting. But Hansie Cronje never killed and maimed people, ruined
family life or placed a serious drain on the economy. Have we all
gone mad and lost our total perspective?
Lack
of law equals chaotic tariffs