Police’s Directorate of Traffic and Road Safety has, for more than five years now, been running a toll-free telephone line through which members of the public are encouraged to report cases of indiscipline on the roads. It is difficult to establish whether the number, 0800199099, is widely known and utilised by the public.
Police could not provide the number of reports made through this line, but there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that a significant number of reports concern the conduct of drivers of vehicles owned by government agencies and departments.
Scenes of pedestrians jumping into a roadside ditch or motorists ending up in a ditch because they were trying to avoid a speeding government vehicle are quite commonplace. Drivers of the fleets of government vehicles, most of them tinted and equipped with sirens, continue to defy traffic regulations by, among other things, defying speed limits and red lights, speeding past school zones, bullying other road users off the roads, speeding through zebra crossings or driving on the pedestrian walkways and pavements.
These acts give the impression that the laws that the traffic police officers often invoke when they flag down privately owned cars only apply to the poor and the powerless. The impunity of those who drive cars with red or blue registration number plates has to stop. Traffic officers have a duty to swing into action and end this impunity. The Traffic and Road Safety Act never placed government-owned vehicles above the law.
The automated Express Penalty System (EPS) and traffic regulations, which the government put on hold to allow for a review of some of the controversies around it, present the country with the best opportunity to deal with drivers of vehicles with red and blue registration number plates. The EPSAuto had been designed to detect violations like speeding and running the red-lights, capture and process the vehicle or motorcycle registration number plate complete with details, including the point at which the traffic offense was committed, the time it was committed, provide photographic or video evidence of the crime and generate an E-fine, all of which was to be logged into the Intelligent Transport Management System (ITMS) database against the violating vehicle or motorcycle.
In the case of government cars, the e-fine tickets were meant to be sent to the accounting officer, who would in turn take it up with the errant drivers. This presents the best opportunity of dealing with the drivers of those red and blue registration number plates.