With the festive season well underway, members of the Makhado Municipal traffic department have warned motorist that they will have zero tolerance this year when it comes to traffic law enforcement.

The Christmas season annually sees hundreds of people die in vehicle accidents on the country’s roads. In the Soutpansberg area, the festive season got off to a bad start with numerous fatal and near-fatal accidents since the start of December. The large number of accidents again sparked a public outcry that local law enforcers are not doing enough to curb the high number of accidents.

Well, the Makhado Municipal traffic department says they have had enough of law breakers. The past week, they have embarked on a campaign to crack down on traffic offenders. One such offender lost almost a whole day of travel last Thursday because his vehicle was severely overloaded. The load on his bakkie and trailer towered over four metres into the air, boasting a whole house’s furniture, including a double bed, dining room suite, lounge suite and complete kitchen. In addition to all this, there was also construction material such as bags of cement, steel door frames and roofing. Traffic law states, however, that the total height of a vehicle’s load should not exceed half of the vehicle’s total height.

Travelling from Johannesburg to Zimbabwe, the offender’s luck ran out in Louis Trichardt when he caught the eye of municipal traffic officials Mugeri and Chabalala. Not only did they slap the driver with a stiff fine, but also impounded his vehicle and trailer until such time that he was able to offload the vehicle to the acceptable height limit.

This meant the offender had to acquire the service of an additional vehicle at extra cost.

The question everyone asked, however, was how this motorist had managed to travel all the way from Gauteng without being stopped.

“This is not Gauteng or Polokwane. Here in Makhado we will not allow this sort of behaviour,” Mugeri said. He added that by taking the vehicle of the road, they probably not only saved the life of the driver, but also those of fellow road users as chances were that the severely overloaded vehicle would not have been able to navigate the steep descent and sharp corners of the Soutpansberg Mountain pass. Mugeri also warned local motorist not to take chances this festive season and to adhere to traffic laws.

On a positive note, local fire brigade chief Mr Jack Ramalatso said on Tuesday that the emergency services had had a quiet week until then. He said that there were a couple of accidents the past week, but that none of them was that serious. Ramalatso suspects, however,  that this situation will get worse with Christmas and New Year around the corner.

In the meantime, the annual Arrive Alive campaign was launched in the province last week. As part of the campaign, motorists will be able to make use of the Arrive Alive tent for a rest at the N1/Songozwi Street junction in Louis Trichardt.