Joburg metro police fears it's losing war against drunken driving

The city released its monthly stats on Tuesday, which show the metro police arrested over 800 motorists for drunken driving.

“We had 801 people driving under the influence of alcohol, it appears that we are not winning. It’s increasing,” he said.

Tembe added that arrests do not always lead to successful prosecutions. 

“As the JMPD we arrest people who are drunk, but we don’t prosecute them and take them to the police station. We have no control over what happens there, if they are being released in the same night we have no control over it. Ours is to ensure that the public is safe from drunken drivers.”

There were also 15 deaths and 83 arrests on the city’s freeways.

Tembe said the city has instituted various measures to deal with drunken driving, including the deployment of metro police to known hot-spots.

“We deploy where we know that people who drink and drive will use that road. Secondly, we deploy on the basis of the fatalities. So where there is too much fatalities in that road we deploy our officers and we find that these accidents are caused by drunken driving and subsequently cause so much misery.”