You could spend 7-days in jail for driving drunk before bail hearing

The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) has proposed that drinking and driving be considered as serious as murder and rape.

The cooperation wants an offender to spend seven days behind bars before seeing a magistrate for a bail application.

RTMC is proposing driving under the influence to be moved from a schedule 2 offence to a schedule 5 and 6 offence equivalent to murder and rape under the Criminal Procedure Act.

The argument is that those who drink and drive put many other motorist lives in danger and a heftier penalty could bring results.

Speaking to 702, the Justice Project South Africa chair Howard Dembovsky said the road traffic cooperation was blowing hot air.

He said there was nothing new about the proposal by the Road Traffic Management Corporation.

The calls have been made since September 2015 according to Dembovsky, but failed to get past the department of justice to start to amend the Criminal Procedure Act.

Radio host Bongani Bingwa argued that stricter punishment could prove a way to save lives, which Dembovsky agreed to.

The Project South Africa chair, however, said he did not support the proposal’s punishment approach.

“The saps already has a standard operating procedure which demands that a person who has been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol must be detained for a minimum of four hours, and observed to see whether they have sobered up before they are released on bail.”

There is no need to use the system of prolonging bail as punishment as the RTMC likes to propose, he said.

(Compiled by Gopolang Chawane)

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