Annual roadworthy tests will do nothing more than inconvenience motorists, safety expert warns

The enforcement of annual roadworthiness tests for all vehicles in South Africa has been widely mooted as a potential solution to the country’s alarming road death rate, but there are some heavy question marks over the effectiveness of such a move.

Following Transport Minister Barbara Creecy’s recent announcement of the 2024/2025 festive season road death statistics, which showed a 5.3% increase in fatalities versus the previous year, the Automobile Association (AA) has called for mandatory annual vehicle inspections that would form part of the vehicle licence renewal process. These inspections, it says, could be done in collaboration with independent, but reputable organisations.

While the AA describes this as a “highly effective recommendation”, long-standing road safety advocate Rob Handfield-Jones, who is managing director of driving.co.za, says the data simply does not support such a statement.

Handfield-Jones cites figures from the RTMC, showing that vehicle factors as a contribution to fatal crashes declined from 7.8% in 2015 to 4.2% in 2023, despite a significantly higher quantity of unroadworthy vehicles known to be operating on our roads.

“It is surprising that the AA has adopted an advocacy position contradicted by publicly-available data,” Handfield-Jones said.

“It is even more surprising to see the Association attempting to curry favour with the Department of Transport with a zero-benefit recommendation. What the Association proposes would mean substantially higher costs and inconvenience for motorists. It is the latter to which the AA owes its first duty, not government, whose incompetence and neglect is the direct and sole cause of our road safety disaster.” 

Although roadworthiness is a highly important consideration in road safety, it has become a less significant issue relative to human and road factors, Handfield-Jones argues.

For instance, buses are required by law to pass a roadworthiness inspection every six months, while minibus taxis and heavy vehicles require this once a year. Yet shockingly, there is no evidence that the legislation for these vehicle classes has led to a more roadworthy vehicle parc.

“Careful study of roadworthiness by a credible independent organisation is needed before any action is taken on the issue. And the conclusions of such research would need to be extremely robust to justify the cost and infrastructure implications of expanding regular roadworthiness testing to the entire vehicle parc,” Handfield-Jones added.

Barbara Creecy, upon releasing the aforementioned festive season road statistics, said 87% of crashes occur as a result of human behaviour. Chief among these are speed, loss of control over vehicles, reckless overtaking, drunken driving and fatigue.

Periodic testing written into law

Periodic testing of older vehicles has already been written into South African law, however the amendment has yet to be gazetted and the Department of Transport (DOT) has not yet published an implementation date, even though regulations were put in place as far back as 2014.

The amendment to “Regulation 138” states that all vehicles that are 10 years of age or older would be required to undergo roadworthy testing every two years.

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