Publications
Partners
Tshwane - Road safety group, Arrive Alive, reported on a road user who shared photos of what appears to be a Tshwane metro police department car parked under a bridge on a highway near Pretoria.
However, it wasn't an actual police car but rather a cardboard cut-out of an official vehicle. The user indicated on his Facebook timeline that these boards were placed on the N4 before Rosslyn.
The real question is whether this budget form of visible policing will curb poor road behaviour?
'Active traffic enforcement'
Isaac Mahamba, Tshwane Metro Police, confirms that the cut-out police car was part of a road safety initiative by the Bakwena road agency to curb speeding during the Easter period. The agency operates along the N1 and N4 in Tshwane, Bela-Bela, Rustenburg, and Zeerust.
Arrive Alive's Johan Jonck told Wheels24: "We need active, visible and effective traffic enforcement to make roads safer in South Africa. For many years the motoring public has heard that there are not enough traffic officials on our roads and that that not enough enforcement is done at night (apart from Festive season and Easter).
"This may not be effective in the sense that it does not prevent many of the moving violations on our roads, but we should recognise that they may contribute towards bringing a reminder to check speed, to check your driving and that enforcement may be taking place at any time. Who knows? It might be a decoy and the actual officers could be a kilometre further down the road?"
What do you think of the cut-out police car used in Bakwena? Is this budget form of visible policing effective? Email us
In 2013, Wheels24 reported that Indian authorities used in Bangalore are trying a new way to reduce traffic offences - using cardboard cops to scare drivers into believing the long arm of the law is watching them.
A lethal combination of poor law enforcement, untrained drivers and bad roads result in one of the world's most dangerous countries to drive in.
