Around 10:30 on the morning of Thursday 11 August a truck drove over the entire front section of a learner driver’s car in Atlantis Cape Town. Both the learner and the licence examiner were killed in this horrific accident

Lieutenant Colonel Andre Traut told News 24 on Friday that the circumstances surrounding the accident are being treated as a culpable homicide case. Read More

In the South African legal system we do not make use of  different degrees of murder. Our criminal law regime differentiate between murder and culpable homicide. Murder can be described as  the intentional killing of a human being. Culpable homicide, on the other hand, can be defined as the negligent killing of a human being. 
Sometimes it is necessary for the law to punish people for acts they did not subjectively foresee. If someone acts in a manner that is objectively unreasonable, even though they believe otherwise, and the conducts leads to the death of another person, he/she is negligent and guilty of culpable homicide. 

 
A Culpable homicide conviction, due to a motor-vehicle collision, can only be successful if the prosecution proves, beyond reasonable doubt, that the driver was negligent and that this negligence was the cause of, or contributed to, the death.