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The Road to Safety Strategy puts a high priority on co-ordinated action in all the key areas of road safety: law compliance, driver fitness and training, vehicle condition, fleet regulation, overload control, pedestrian education, direct community road safety participation and active passengers and public empowerment.
Driver fitness influences reaction time and stopping distance. If you are an inexperienced driver, you might not read a situation properly and take inappropriate action when trying to prevent an accident.
Since the announcement of the Strategy in November 2001, the Department has developed an implementation business plan. This provides for 14 projects, including Driver fitness.
A sum of R21,5 million was transferred to the provinces to upgrade all substandard driver's licence testing centres (DLTCs). This will ensure compliance by the DLTCs with provisions of the National Road Traffic Act, 1996(Act 93 of 1996).
The driver fitness project aims to ensure an acceptable level of competency of drivers through the enhancement of the driving license system and the effective adjudication of offenders. Numerous factors have lead to the poor competency of drivers. These include fraud and corruption within the driver licensing system, different standards of operation and non-compliance of driving license testing centres, inadequate inspection of the centers due to lack of capacity and the powerlessness of the Inspectorate to suspend or cancel the registration of an examiner or testing centre. Furthermore, professional drivers are currently tested on the same standard as ordinary drivers and serious and repeat offenders are not retested after having their licenses suspended.
- Expanding the capacity of the driving license testing Inspectorate;
- Developing a best practice model for driving license testing centres;
- Investigating the possibility of formalising and regulating driving schools;
- Financial administration of driving license testing revenue;
- The upgrading of driving license testing centres;
- Developing a system for retesting repeat offenders;
- The revision of the K53 test.
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