South Africa should scrap its current driver’s licence car system and replace it with a digital-only model.
This is according to Rob Handfield-Jones, road safety expert and managing director of driving skills company Driving.co.za.
Handfield-Jones told MyBroadband that making the country’s driver’s licences electronic would make them fraudproof, and would enable traffic officers to concentrate on actual road safety enforcement.
He also argued that driver’s licences cards should not expire, mirroring the sentiment of civil rights organization Afriforum in its recent court case.
Benefits of going digital
Handfield-Jones believes that physical driver’s licence cards have no merit, stating that they are an “outdated concept from an era before connected devices.”
While licence cards are supposed to be a proof of record that an individual has met a prescribed standard of driving skill, more than 50% of cards sampled by the Special Investigations Unit were found to be fraudulently bought, forged, or simply illegal.
“Our licensing system is no longer a system for imposing minimum driving standards – it’s now a document-issuing system where the primary barrier to entry is corruption, not competence,” Handfield-Jones said.
A proposed solution to this would be to use an electronic licence verified through a person’s ID number, which law enforcement can quickly authenticate by checking an online database. If a person has no ID on them, they would be required to supply it to SAPS within seven days of the initial case.
The director went on to argue that the debate over South Africa’s 5-year licence validity periods only became an issue because of the administrative hassles associated with it, which are the result of government’s failure to put inexpensive networked enforcement solutions into the hands of traffic officers.
An online system would allow immediate roadside verification of vehicle registration plates and licences, while also preventing opportunities for bribes. This would also mean it is no longer necessary for vehicles to carry licence discs and for drivers to have their cards on them at all times, he said.
Challenges to the current system
The reason why government has been slow to address the possibility of electronic licences is because it could result in a substantial loss of revenue.
This is an argument that has been put forward by Driving.co.za, as well as groups like the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), who have been long-running critics of the current system.
Handfield-Jones said that road safety should be compared to hospitals, in that it is a public service intended to save lives, and should not be seen as a revenue stream for the national government.
Improving vehicle safety through more effective means than maintaining the current system would also help to reduce the approximately 250,000 road deaths per decade, which would be a far better use of the state’s resources, he explained.
To support this argument, Handfield-Jones cited South African road accident statistics dating back as far as 1981, when the country did not have a regularly-expiring driver’s card.
Driver’s licence cards were introduced in 1998, which was the safest year on local roads in South Africa’s history with an average of 6.9 incidents per 100 million vehicle kilometres – something that was achieved while using a policy where licences were printed into ID books.
Between 1998 and 2006, the fatality rate nearly doubled, at which point the government stopped issuing the annual statistic. However, data from other well-documented areas, such as the yearly holiday accident rate, suggest that the figure has doubled once again, meaning South Africa’s roads are four times more dangerous than they were under the old licence policy.
South Africa has announced that it plans to introduce “smart cards” as part of a phased rollout to launch electronic licences by the end of 2026, which users would then be able to access from their phones.
Under the current proposal, these licences would still have to be renewed, but transport minister Sindisiwe Chikunga has stated that a consideration is underway to extend the valid period from five to eight years.
Keyword: Why South African driver’s licences should be digital-only