NATIONAL NEWS - Two national organisations lobbying for safer roads believe the Transport Department should focus on enforcing the rules rather than dropping speed limits.
The department hopes to reduce speed limits by the end of the year.
The new proposed limits are:
• 40km/h in urban areas;
• 80km/h on roads other than a freeway outside urban areas; and
• 120km/h on freeways – provided that a speed limit of 100km/h applies in cases where a freeway passes through a residential area.
“The department believes that implementing these new speed limits will make a difference when it comes to the amount of accidents, but we do not think it will have any impact at all,” Dembovsky said.
He said most licensed drivers in South Africa, particularly those who spend the majority of their lives driving, become blissfully unaware of the meaning of the speed limit. “It is clearly necessary for us to remind the department that despite the claim that speed kills, the vast majority of so-called speed enforcement exercises in South Africa remain practised by utilising speed cameras.”
