The overall objective of traffic law enforcement is to save lives, Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele said on Thursday.

"Speed remains a major contributory factor to motor vehicle collisions in the country," he said in a statement.

"Increased traffic volumes have made it no longer safe, for both officers and motorists, to carry out manual traffic enforcement."

He was responding to claims that traffic law enforcement was more about making money than contributing to road safety.

This followed recent media reports alleging officers were undertrained, equipment was sub-standard, trapping was carried out illegally and speed cameras were illegally used.

Ndebele said camera law enforcement was a necessity, with the primary purpose to address road safety and nothing else.

"Cameras constitute not more than 30 percent of all law enforcement activities and must comply with certain prescribed norms and standards."

He said that in order to reduce road traffic offences and road crashes, traffic officers would soon be provided with wireless, hand-held pocket computers which would enable continuous, fast, real-time electronic access from the road side to the National Traffic Information System.

The specially developed software would enable officers to record traffic violations and road crashes electronically at the roadside via a central server to a traffic offence register.

A variety of traffic law enforcement reports would be generated from the system, including the monitoring and evaluation of the performance of individual officers and traffic authorities.

The transport department said there were about 700 000 road accidents a year in South Africa, resulting in about 15 000 deaths and 50 000 serious injuries, at a cost of almost R43-billion.

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