New municipal traffic and crime prevention by-laws - all 53 pages of them - tell you exactly what you can and can't do.
|||Pietermaritzburg - Don’t leave your bicycle lying in the street.
Don’t walk or drive over newly painted lines or fire hoses. Don’t put up “distracting” signs or notices. Don’t splash the pedestrians. Don’t break the traffic rules and don’t break the traffic signs.
These are some of the instructions in uMngeni Municipality’s new traffic and crime prevention by-laws - all 53 pages of them - gazetted on Friday.
“When water, mud or slush is lying on a street, the driver or operator of a vehicle shall drive on the street in a manner so as not to splash any pedestrian who is using the sidewalk or pedestrian crosswalk,” say the rules.
“No driver or operator of a vehicle shall turn the vehicle on a street so as to proceed in the opposite direction except at an unsignalised median opening or at an unsignalised intersection of streets, neither of which is a lane or a driveway, provided that such turn is not otherwise prohibited,” says another (this means: Don’t make U-turns).
Don’t wash your vehicle on the street “or on or near any municipal-owned property”. And don’t do it at home except “in a manner as not to constitute a nuisance”.
Park properly - and if you don’t know how to do that, there are detailed instructions (bring a tape measure). There are a lot of instructions on parking: Turn the engine off. Use the parking brake on a hill. Don’t double park. Don’t fix your car in the street.
Don’t drive vehicles without tyres on the streets without a permit.
Only the police may ride bicycles on the pavements, or ride without their feet on the pedals.
All cyclists (including police) must keep at least one hand on the handlebars and may not perform acrobatic tricks.
Taxi drivers may not be “disorderly”.
But there’s a bit of hope for those who run foul of the new by-law: fines of first offenders are halved if paid within 10 days.
The Star