In an effort to deal with unruly and negligent Cape Town taxi drivers, the City is adopting “aggressive” measures to manage the situation.
City of Cape Town Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith told Cape Talk the City is working tirelessly to address the issue.
“Between Hout Bay and the city [(Cape Town CBD)], in the last six months they have done 42 operations, 28 joint-operations with SAPs and law enforcement, they impounded 64 taxis and issued 3625 fines.”
This comes after a resident from Llandudno called in to Cape Talk to discuss the dangers taxis pose at the top of a specific intersection on Victoria Road, and said that taxis force other cars to move “into the yellow line” and pose a risk for other drivers.
Smith added that traffic officials in Cape Town have issued 3 625 fines for driving offences on that same road in Llandudno.
“Citywide we have impounded 2 139 taxis, issued 59 825 fines to taxis for driving offences and dealt with 22 711 PDP permit contraventions,” he said.
Smith saud that until local enforcement and traffic officials are allowed to impound taxis for offences committed by their drivers, the issue may remain unresolved.
“The city is aggressively enforcing with regards to taxis, but I will say again fines for taxis have limited impacts until we have access to the new provincial traffic act and are able to impound for these offences, the dynamic will not change significantly because it does not amend driver behavior, there are limited circumstances for which you can impound.”
The taxi unit employed by the city operates in larger numbers and there are currently 30 vehicles within this unit.
It can be dangerous for individual officials to apprehend a taxi, hence the need for officials to work in teams. “There are circumstances under which a single officer trying to do enforcement against taxis will be assaulted, attacked, bitten, stabbed or any number of injuries,” Smith said.
Smith admits that he believes the situation with taxis on Cape roads is “out of control” and adds that the only solution may be to impound taxi vehicles in order to ensure that they adhere to road regulations.
“Until we are able to impound vehicles for these routine traffic offences rather than just finning them…we won’t change the dynamic and that is what I am pushing for.”
Picture: Facebook, Kevi Ribbans.