There is a certain appeal to transport minister Barbara Creecy’s proposal to ban drinking and driving altogether. About half the drivers involved in fatal traffic crashes are over the legal limit, according to the Medical Research Council (MRC), and taking booze out the picture will clearly save lives.
The trouble is no proposed regulatory change ever goes unchallenged, and the inevitable row over Creecy’s plan risks diverting attention away from the government’s failure to enforce what is already on the statute books.
The National Road Traffic Act prohibits drivers from having a blood alcohol concentration over 0.05%, with a lower limit of 0.02% for professional drivers. It is a pragmatic, middle-ground approach that allows an individual to have a beer or a small glass of wine and still get behind the wheel, and is broadly in line with most European countries.
The US and Canada allow a higher blood alcohol level, while many Middle Eastern countries have a zero-tolerance approach. The maximum penalties for flouting the law in South Africa are severe, with fines of up to R120,000, as many as six years in prison, and a permanent criminal record. There are equally sensible provisions on speed limits, with similarly stern penalties for offenders.
Yet year after year the government publishes statistics that grimly highlight the carnage on South Africa’s roads. Preliminary data from the government’s 2025/26 road safety campaign for the festive season shows more than 8,500 drivers were caught over the legal limit, representing 4.9% of all the drivers who were tested.
Even during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the sale of alcohol was periodically banned, booze featured prominently in traffic-related deaths. Half the drivers and a third of the pedestrians involved in such fatalities in 2020/21 had blood alcohol concentrations above the legal limit, according to the MRC’s recent injury mortality survey.
The rules of the road are blithely flouted, with drivers consuming far more alcohol than they should because they fear no consequence. There are too few road blocks, breathalyser tests are vanishingly rare except during highly publicised campaigns during the festive season or at Easter, and the authorities appear largely indifferent to the death and destruction wrought by drunk drivers.
The risks of consuming alcohol are well established: it impairs concentration and judgment, slows reaction time and reduces co-ordination. For many people, even a small amount of alcohol has a profound impact on their ability to handle a vehicle. Yet they will neither forgo the booze nor seek alternative means of transport, because there is neither social pressure nor any real government deterrent to do otherwise.
Simple solution
Creecy’s transport portfolio is complex. Instead of pressing ahead with legislative changes that will take at least three years to get through parliament, she would do far better to expend her energy on getting municipal and provincial authorities to implement the measures already at their disposal. Being seen to act goes a long way, as Cape Town can attest after it introduced a municipal bylaw enabling traffic officers to issue fines and impound the mobile phones of people caught holding them while driving.
Penalties are just one way to discourage drinking and driving. Providing safer and more reliable and affordable public transport would also help reduce the number of drunk drivers.
This is not the first time the government has tried to ban booze for drivers. The Road Traffic Amendment Act passed by parliament in 2024 originally contained provisions that sought to reduce the blood alcohol threshold to zero. During public consultation on the bill critics rightly pointed out that it risked creating the absurd situation in which people who had simply used mouthwash or taken cough medicine could face prosecution.
Promising to enact zero-tolerance laws on drinking and driving makes for a great soundbite. But flighting the prospect of new laws with little demonstrable track record of enforcing those already in place is naive at best and, at worst, no more than performative politics.
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