Twenty-five buses were taken off the roads following a thorough inspection in an initiative between the Road Traffic Management Corporation and Johannesburg Metro Police on Saturday.

About 45 buses were stopped between Kya Sands and Randburg and the 25 had faults deemed critical to safe operation.

““The 25 buses, mostly Putco, had their licence discs pulled and will have to be proved roadworthy before they can hit the streets again,” said Road Traffic Management Corporation spokesperson, Ashref Ismail.

A scary finding is that the majority of the faults had to do with the braking systems. Now if you think of how vital good brakes are in a bus loaded with people, you can get an idea of what can go wrong. The load on the brakes increases with the large amount of passengers these buses carry.

Other faults found were vehicles with faulty headlights, steering systems not functioning correctly and oil and diesel leaks in the engine.

An additional 20 of the buses were issued with citations but were not pulled off the road. An alarming fact is that two of the buses were in such poor conditions that they had to be towed back to the depot.