Mandatory Defensive Driving: Why PrDPs Need Rethinking After the Vanderbijlpark Tragedy

There is nothing professional about the Professional Driving Permit. The system is producing underqualified drivers.

I say that without hesitation, and after the Vanderbijlpark scholar transport tragedy, I’m done pretending otherwise.

A few years ago, I wrote about the need to make defensive driving a core requirement for professional drivers in South Africa. The reaction from many industry professionals was predictable. It will cost too much. Extra courses. Extra time. Extra money. That conversation ended there for most people.

Today, twelve children are dead, and once again we are talking about what went wrong instead of why it keeps happening.

We already accept health checks as part of the PrDP process, and rightly so. A fatigued or unwell driver is a danger to himself and everyone else on the road. But a healthy driver who has never been properly trained to think defensively is just as dangerous. Yet the PrDP system barely looks at how a driver actually reacts when the road turns hostile.

The Vanderbijlpark crash was avoidable. That statement makes people uncomfortable, but it needs to be said.

Somewhere in those seconds before impact, assumptions were made. On the truck side, it is entirely possible the thought crossed the driver’s mind, I know taxis, he’ll get back into his lane before I get there. That thinking is not stupidity. It is conditioning. Years of surviving bad driving teaches you to expect near-misses instead of preparing for worst-case scenarios.

By the time the truck moved left, it was a last-ditch effort. Unfortunately, the taxi fled in the same direction. Two desperate reactions, one outcome. If defensive driving had been drilled into decision-making from the start, speed reduction and early preparation may have happened sooner, not when it was already too late.

On the taxi side, the failure is even clearer. Anyone trained properly in defensive driving knows one basic rule, you do not swerve right to avoid a head-on collision. You brake hard, you move left early, or you don’t overtake at all. That knowledge saves lives. It is taught. It is learned. It is not instinct.

Read | Mastering Defensive Driving Challenges | Tailgaters, Cell Phones, and Rainstorms

Experience alone does not make a driver safe. In fact, experience often breeds overconfidence. A newly trained driver with strong defensive habits can be far safer than a veteran who believes he has seen it all and survived worse.

This is where the PrDP system fails completely. It checks criminal history and health, but ignores behaviour, judgement, anticipation, and reaction. A criminal record does not tell you how a driver will respond when a taxi appears in his lane. Defensive driving training does.

What makes this worse is that criminal records unfairly block some drivers from getting PrDPs, pushing them into illegal work, forged permits, or non-compliance. That doesn’t improve safety. It erodes it.

Yes, defensive driving costs money. But crashes cost more. Funerals cost more. Trauma costs more. Lost trust costs more.

If safety truly comes first, then cost cannot be the excuse anymore. Until defensive driving is mandatory, tested, and taken seriously for professional drivers, we will keep standing at crash scenes saying the same thing: It was avoidable.