This article was first published by Focus on Transport on 24 July 2026
In the late 1990s, South Africans witnessed the rise of what were then commonly referred to as “black taxis” on our roads. What shocked many people at the time was not simply the speed at which the taxi industry expanded, but the speed at which ordinary rules of the road appeared to collapse around it.
Traffic lights became optional; emergency lanes became driving lanes; stopping in the middle of roads became normal; aggressive intimidation of other motorists rapidly became part of daily life on South African roads.
At the time, a friend of mine – no older than 21 – made a remark that has stayed with me ever since. He said that once people publicly watch others break laws without consequence, they would eventually begin to imitate that behaviour themselves, not only on the roads, but in every part of South Africa.
Thirty years later it is difficult to argue he was wrong.
South Africa suffers from a crisis not merely of crime, but of visible impunity. Roads are simply where the collapse is most obvious. The law is no longer consistently enforced, and where laws are not enforced, they slowly cease to exist in the public mind.
The tragedy is that this behaviour is no longer confined to taxis or any particular racial or social group. Today, one sees white, black, Indian and coloured drivers behaving identically. The lawlessness has become democratised. South Africans have learned from one another that rules are optional and enforcement is unlikely.
Every morning, my family drives through Bryanston along Main Road to drop our children at school. We jokingly refer to it as “crossing the Wild West,” but the reality is not funny. In the span of a few kilometres one witnesses a staggering catalogue of offences: cars driving through red lights without hesitation, emergency lanes treated as additional traffic lanes, turning lanes used as straight lanes, illegal U-turns, intersections blocked entirely, passengers dropped in active traffic, and reckless cutting across multiple lanes.
And yet there is almost never a police officer in sight.
Humorously though, around midday, a roadblock reliably appears near Westminster Avenue where motorists, like my wife and I, are stopped almost daily to check licence discs, drivers’ licences and outstanding speeding fines. Meanwhile, visibly unroadworthy taxis and unlicensed vehicles simply turn off before the checkpoint and bypass it entirely.
We have pointed this out repeatedly to the officers involved; it usually falls on deaf ears. On one occasion one of the officers actually said to my wife: “We are here to keep you safe”. We still laugh about it at home on occasion. The truth is obvious: it is easier to generate revenue from compliant middle-class motorists than it is to confront genuine road disorder.
The contradiction becomes even more absurd in practice.
Last year, I was pulled over on Main Road for travelling at 90 km/h in an 80km/h zone. I had been extremely ill and was returning from the pharmacy with medication. I had unintentionally allowed my speed to creep upward while travelling downhill, distracted by not one, but three separate vehicles that drove through red traffic lights directly in front of me.
All three offenders passed the police officers who subsequently stopped me.
When I asked why they had not pursued the red-light offenders, despite openly admitting they had seen the violations occur, the response was astonishing: “We are the high-speed pursuit department. We don’t deal with other traffic offences.” That single sentence captures much of what has gone wrong in South Africa.
Government messaging increasingly insists that “speed kills.” It is a politically useful slogan because it is simple, measurable and profitable to enforce. But South Africa’s road crisis is significantly more complicated than that. Our road fatality rate remains among the highest in the world, at roughly 25 deaths per 100,000 people. Nearly half of all fatalities on South African roads are pedestrians. Alcohol also plays a catastrophic role in our road deaths, with various studies estimating extraordinarily high levels of alcohol involvement in fatal crashes.
These are not merely “speed” problems. They are lawlessness problems. Drunk driving. Pedestrian negligence. Red-light violations. Reckless overtaking. Unroadworthy vehicles. Corruption. Non-enforcement. Driver intimidation. These are the realities ordinary South Africans navigate daily.
Ironically, the world itself remains divided on speed limits. While many cities are lowering urban speed limits in dense pedestrian areas, other countries continue experimenting with higher highway limits as vehicle safety technology improves. Czechia, for example, has begun trialling 150 km/h limits on selected motorway sections. The debate globally is therefore far more nuanced than the simplistic slogan “speed kills.”
Modern vehicles are vastly safer, more stable and more technologically advanced than the cars upon which many original speed standards were based on decades ago. At the same time, traffic engineering research has long recognised that large speed differentials between vehicles can themselves contribute to dangerous driving conditions i.e. if you drive too slowly, you are as much of a danger as you are when you drive too fast.
But South Africa is not having an honest debate about road safety. Instead, we increasingly pursue the easiest form of enforcement: speed cameras, roadside fines and administrative policing aimed primarily at motorists who are already broadly compliant. Meanwhile, truly dangerous lawlessness flourishes untouched.
The greatest tragedy of all is that our children are growing up watching this unfold.
We are teaching our daughter to drive, and it is genuinely frightening. Not because she cannot operate the vehicle, but because she is entering a road environment where predictability, courtesy and lawful behaviour are steadily disappearing.
A society cannot survive when laws become optional and enforcement becomes selective. Roads are where nations reveal who they truly are. Every morning on South Africa’s roads, we are teaching our children either that rules matter, or that aggression, opportunism and impunity matter more.
At the moment, I fear we are teaching the latter.
Sources and references:
Official South African government road safety report.
Minister Barbara Creecy: Announcement of Preliminary 2024/2025 Festive Season Statistics
Stats SA mortality analysis.
“Driver intoxication and risk for fatal crashes in South Africa”
Academic analysis of alcohol-related road deaths.
Global Highways – Drink Driving in South Africa
Arrive Alive – Pedestrian Safety
Daily Investor – Dangerous Roads Analysis
- https://dailyinvestor.com/south-africa/86979/south-africa-has-the-most-dangerous-roads-in-the-world/
Czech Republic 150 km/h Motorway Trial
Speed Limits are being raised across the world
