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Hijacking · smash-and-grab · as of 1 October 2026

Hijacking and smash-and-grab hotspots.

Tsamaya marks reported hijacking and smash-and-grab spots on the map and tells you as you approach one. It is awareness only and never changes your route.

What a hotspot is

Reported spots, marked on the map

Off-ramps, intersections and stretches of road where hijackings and smash-and-grabs have been reported.

Compiled from public reporting (SAPS, NHPA/Arrive Alive, regional news). Approximate and not a complete list. Each hotspot is labelled by its road: Tsamaya names roads, never the neighbourhoods around them.

There are 115 on the map today, in 7 metros.

What Tsamaya does

A marker and a spoken heads-up

  • Hotspots show on the phone map, the car map and the CarPlay mini map. Settings has switches for them.
  • As you approach one, Tsamaya says so. The same hotspot is not announced again after a reroute.
  • It works without a route. In free drive, Tsamaya warns about hotspots coming up on the road you are driving.
  • A hotspot is awareness only. It never changes your route and never feeds a risk rating or a grade. Routes are planned from the rated areas and checked roads, which is a different layer.

By metro

How many reported hotspots each metro has

These are counts of reported spots, not a measure of how risky a metro is. A metro with more ratings or more reporting will show more.

MetroReported hotspots
Johannesburg34
Cape Town29
Pretoria25
Ekurhuleni20
West Rand3
Durban3
Secunda1

Limits

Not a complete list

The list is compiled from public reporting and is not complete, so a stretch with no marker is not a stretch without risk. A hotspot says something has been reported at a spot. It does not say it will happen to you, or that it will not happen elsewhere. Lower risk is not no risk.

Questions

Asked often

Yes. Reported hijacking and smash-and-grab spots show on the map and you hear a heads-up as you approach one. They are awareness only: a hotspot never changes your route, and the list is not complete. Each is labelled by its road, never by the neighbourhood around it.

Yes. Known fixed speed cameras show on the map and you hear a heads-up as one comes up. It is a list of the cameras we know about, not a complete one, and coverage is better in some metros than others. The pins and the spoken alerts each have a switch in Settings.

No. Hotspots are awareness only. Your route is planned from the rated areas and checked roads for the hour you drive. A hotspot gives you a marker and a heads-up as you approach, so you can pay attention at that spot.

Published South African crime statistics, scored against map data to work out where vehicle crime concentrates. An AI review gives a second opinion on the ratings, and a person sense-checks the results, looking closely at any that stand out. After that, drivers' reports refine the map: a person reads each one before anything changes.

No, and we will never tell you otherwise. Tsamaya cuts your exposure to areas with a history of vehicle crime. Crime is not predictable, and no route is safe. Lower risk is not no risk: treat it as better information for the choice you were going to make anyway.

Get the app

Try it on your next drive.

Free, in open beta, on Android and iPhone. Lower risk is not no risk.

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Android

Join the open test on Google Play, then install it like any other app.

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iPhone

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