I was honestly looking forward to some people losing their drivers’ licences, because they don’t deserve to have them in the first place.
So you can imagine my disappointment that the promised traffic offence demerit system is on hold again.
The law known as Aarto was meant to overhaul our traffic law management.
The most exciting part (for me) was going to be a system that would see some people’s licences permanently suspended after repeatedly breaking road rules.
I have a well-known loathing for reckless drivers, drag racers, drunk drivers and taxi drivers who wilfully flout traffic laws.
So while I understood that Aarto wasn’t perfect, I believed it was going to be a good starting point to address these dangers that often cause the injuries or deaths of innocent people.
But last week, the Pretoria High Court put the brakes on Aarto by declaring it unconstitutional, even though sections of the new law had already been implemented in parts of the country.
Of course, government can still appeal the ruling, but those in the know say the law is so badly written that it cannot be salvaged and is therefore pretty much dead in the water.
That fact, as well as knowing how much resources government must have ploughed into getting to this point, is what really annoys me.
It means that all that tax money of ours has been unnecessarily wasted, because government has access to a swarming colony of lawyers; counsel that I presume are expensive and superior legal minds in all aspects of constitutional law.
I presume some of these lawyers would occasionally act as judges and would therefore know what pitfalls to avoid.
So how the hell does this happen?