Recently in the news there has been some talk about new intended traffic laws. According to this article they are supposed to come into effect on 11 May 2017.  The laws are:

• Bakkie drivers may not transport children in the back.
• Bakkie drivers may not transport more than 5 people in the back
• Heavy goods vehicles will be speed limited by weight, and require a sticker indicating the speed

This is going to happen. It has been published in the government gazette. Further laws that they wish to implement at a later stage, but have no due date, include:

• Practical driving re-evaluation when renewing licence
• Re-examine K53 (update it)
• Lowering of speed limits in certain areas.
• Goods vehicles with GVM > 9 tons banned during peak hours.

These laws were first discussed in 2015, but similar to the laws the DoT tried to pass in 2011, have been very poorly communicated to the public, and with any luck will be reconsidered. Both the laws that are changing and the proposed ones were published in the Government Gazette of 11 May 2015. And the Justice Project South Africa submitted some excellent commentary. To what it seems was mainly deaf ears.

I wanted to find more information about these topics, so tried looking around a bit. I first went to the eNATIS website, but their news page was returning a 404 error. The Department of Transport website didn’t go to their homepage (first google result), but asked me for login details. After getting to their proper home page, I couldn’t find any info on any upcoming changes to the NRTA. I then looked through Arrive Alive’s website and couldn’t find any news, and my browser warned me that the AA’s website was untrustworthy.

Let’s look at what’s been published though. On 11 November 2016, the 24th amendment to the NRTR was published in the Government Gazette, it had some definition changes, but ultimately the important parts were that as of 6 months after the Gazette was published, the following will come into effect. paraphrased:

school children may not be conveyed in the goods compartment of a motor vehicle for reward on public roads.

No one may be conveyed in the goods compartment of a motor vehicle for reward unless complying with NTLA provisions.

The amendment also immediately specified the inclusion of the following vehicles into the category not allowed to travel more than 100kmph, paraphrased:

vehicles between 3.5 and 9 tons

So what does all this mean? Basically what I put in the first half of this article. It means the law has and is changing. It means that there quite likely will be more changes later on, but there’s no new information.

The DoT really needs to reconsider the laws it’s implementing and take into count the excellent comments they receive back from the public, specifically organisations such as the Justice Project. They also need to do a better job of publicizing changing laws, and not rely on news outlets to publish these details. Very few people read the government gazette, and even fewer can make sense of what gets published.