No beer: Aarto act aims curb drunk driving

Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula, speaking during the release of the latest festive season fatalities, said the department will make 0% the new legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers.

This law forms part of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act.

The National Road Traffic Act (NRA) currently makes it legal for drivers to get behind the wheel of a car with no more than 0,05-gram blood-alcohol concentration per 100 millilitres and 0,24 milligrams breath alcohol content per 1000 millilitres.

The act will also be rolling out a new demerit system in the hopes of improving road safety and reducing fatalities.

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Aarto spokesperson Monde Mkalipi says he cannot go further into the details because it forms of part regulations that still need to be finalised.

Mkalipi says the regulation is to curb the high number of fatalities causes drunken driving.

"As we are aware as the country we are working on the draft regulations for Aarto and the comments that are being made the Minister of Transport, Mr Fikile Mbalula.

“We are in the process of combing the final draft regulations and these regulations seek to ensure that at the end of the day all South Africans are safe on the road, because as w are aware the problem of drinking and driving is one of the major causes of the fatalities that happen on the road."

Justice Project South Africa's Howard Dembovsky says the implementation of the regulations is key.  

"The fact is that it's a sophisticated system, which requires sophisticated systems. Regrettably our traffic offices are not equipped with sophisticated systems. In fact, in most cases they're not even equipt with two-way radio to establish whether a person driving licence has been suspended or not so it's going to be interesting to see how it's going have any effect at all on the road fatalities in South Africa.”