Staggering amount of traffic fines have been issued since December 1

Cape Town – The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) says over 190,000 traffic fines have been issued since the beginning of December.

At the same time, 4,400 drivers have been arrested for various traffic violations, including drunk driving and speeding.

Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, RTMC spokesperson Simon Zwane said that the major transactions of traffic violence had taken place in provinces that were attracting the highest number of visitors such as the Western Cape, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.

“There has also been drunk driving and speeding, including people who were driving without a drivers’ licence. There have been a large number of cases where motorists were driving vehicles without proper permits that are required,” said Zwane.

“Drivers were taking passengers and driving them into routes that they were not permitted to and we have made huge arrests on those, in some cases we impounded certain cars for violating permit regulations.”

In terms of the reported traffic violations and fines, Zwane said that there had been a large number of arrests linked to motorists who had failed to pay previous traffic fines.

“There will be a follow-up and roadblocks are still going to take place throughout the country and the whole year because the campaigns we are doing are not only meant for the festive season,” he said.

It is expected that most people will be going back to work and with anticipation that traffic will be more on the roads. Zwane said that starting from Tuesday, there will be lower volumes of traffic.

“I think today will be the last traffic peak because we have seen the first wave of people coming back on the December 27 and on Monday there was another peak,” he said.

“Today we might see up to 2 400 cars as we did on Monday coming from N1 and as well as from the N3, we are expecting another volumes of 800 cars coming from Mpumalanga at an hour and from the N4 coming from the North West.”