PETER C BAKER | Law enforcement must rein in reckless taxi drivers

I drove from home in Sandton to work in Rosebank last week and made a survey of minibus taxi driving behaviour, probably more than normal, due to the taxi violence taking place in the Cape, and all of the publicity this has received.

As a regular commuter on the William Nicol highway, I am very aware of the complete disregard for the rules of the road which most taxi drivers feel is their right. Every day we all see instances of close calls involving the bandit taxi drivers. The taxi industry is probably the largest completely unregulated and uncontrolled industry in the country. There may be a couple hundred thousand taxi drivers in SA but there are tens of millions of us!

I counted eight instances of taxis running through red traffic lights, not just as they changed from green to red or red to green but right in the middle of the red light period. In many of these cases it involved forcing cars with the right of way to stop or deviate. Not a single metro traffic cop in sight but there is a metro cop car with two or three cops sitting in it on my street protecting some random VIP, presumably municipal worker, round the clock.

How many accidents are caused by or involve taxis in SA?

A study done by the Automobile Association of SA recorded an annual total of 70,000 minibus taxi crashes, which indicates that taxis in SA amount for double the rate of crashes than all other passenger vehicles.

There is a huge number of Uber and Bolt vehicles, and I am always impressed on how careful and well they drive their passengers.

We road users who respect the rules of the road and drive accordingly must demand more visible policing of our major roadways on which taxis are a daily risk to our safety and lives. On my daily commutes, to see a metro cop monitoring traffic is just a dream.

Even when there is a metro officer directing traffic (replacing the unofficial street “traffic directors”), they ignore taxis committing blatant violations right in front of them. They are a joke. We, the majority of road users, must insist on CCTV cameras at all of the major intersections and chase down the perpetrators of blatant traffic rule violations.

Make traffic fines for public transportation vehicles, including public busses, financially ruinous. Impound unroadworthy vehicles and put them in a crusher, which will spit them out as scrap metal. Minibus taxis should be as monitored as Uber taxis, using available technologies with GPS, cellphones, and other tracking devices.

I pity the people who have to travel in minibus taxis and who do not have a choice of proper affordable and efficient public transportation. The ANC government has failed (again) the very people who voted for it. Taxi users are intimidated and bullied by unscrupulous taxi drivers and dare not say “stop this taxi and let me off...your reckless driving is going to get us killed”.

South Africans have come to accept major road carnage. “Two fully loaded minibus taxis were involved in a head-on collision somewhere in Eastern Cape last night, killing 32 people including 6 children.” This sort of announcement doesn’t even shock us for more than a few minutes. We expect it.

Enough is enough.

• Dr Peter C Baker is a Sowetan reader