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Gauteng · 800 rated areas

Lower-risk driving routes in Johannesburg

Johannesburg is where Tsamaya started and it is still the busiest part of the map. Almost everything funnels through a handful of roads: the M1 and M2, Empire, Louis Botha, Oxford. Those roads run close to the places where vehicle crime concentrates. Plan purely for speed and you will be sent through the worst of it at the worst time of night, without being told.

Rated ground in Johannesburg, with 34 reported hotspots. Tsamaya names roads, never neighbourhoods.

Areas rated high risk, by time of day

552

areas rated high risk at night, 19:30 to 05:00

  • Daytime, 05:00 to 17:30 317
  • Evening, 17:30 to 19:30 354
  • Night, 19:30 to 05:00 552

Of the 800 rated areas in Johannesburg, these are the ones at the highest of the four risk levels, for each of the three times of day. Every figure comes straight from the live database, read on 3 November 2026. The lowest band means an area was checked and carries no routing penalty, which is different from an area we have no data for. A rating describes an area's history of vehicle crime, not what is happening on a street right now: lower risk is not no risk.

Hotspots

34 reported hotspots in Johannesburg

Off-ramps, intersections and stretches of road where hijackings and smash-and-grabs have been reported. The app marks them on the map and gives a spoken heads-up as you approach one. They are awareness only: a hotspot never changes your route, and this is not a complete list.

Hijacking 24

  • Beyers Naude off-ramp N1
  • Booysens Road off-ramp, M1
  • cnr 17th Street & Krause Street
  • cnr Christiaan de Wet Road & Wilgerood Road
  • cnr Elgin Road & Pretoria Road
  • cnr Grayston Drive & 11th Street
  • cnr Grayston Drive & Rivonia Road
  • cnr Harrow Road & Abel Road
  • cnr Harrow Road & Saratoga Avenue
  • cnr Jan Smuts Avenue & St Andrews Road
  • cnr Old Pretoria Main Road & 1st Avenue
  • cnr Old Pretoria Road & 1st Avenue
  • cnr Pretoria Road & CR Swart
  • cnr Rivonia Road & Witkoppen Road
  • cnr Winnie Mandela Drive & Uranium Road
  • Heidelberg Road off-ramp, N17
  • Houghton Drive off-ramp, M1
  • Jan Smuts Avenue & William Nicol Drive split
  • Linksfield Road off-ramp, N3
  • Nelson Mandela Bridge
  • Rivonia off-ramp N1
  • Wolmarans Street between Claim and Nugget Streets
  • Woodmead and Buccleuch interchange, N1/M1
  • Louis Botha Avenue

Smash-and-grab 10

  • cnr Barry Hertzog Avenue & Napier Road
  • cnr Witkoppen Road & Cambridge Road
  • Grayston Drive off-ramp, M1
  • Malibongwe Drive off-ramp, N1
  • Marlboro off-ramp, N3
  • New Road off-ramp, N1
  • Riviera Road off-ramp, M1
  • William Nicol Drive off-ramp, N1
  • Witkoppen Road off-ramp, N1
  • Woodmead Drive off-ramp, M1

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

Driving here

What to know on these roads

  1. 01

    The M1 and M2 through the inner city carry more flagged stretches than any other road we map. Most of it is smash-and-grab and robbery at off-ramps and traffic lights.

  2. 02

    Ratings move sharply between day and night here. Several roads that carry no penalty at midday sit in the top band after 19:30.

  3. 03

    Load-shedding matters. A dark intersection is a different proposition from a lit one, which is why evening and night are rated separately instead of lumped together as "after dark".

Tsamaya rates roads and routes. It does not publish a list of neighbourhoods, and the app never labels a place for anyone other than the driver about to pass through it.

Questions

Johannesburg, asked

Yes. Coverage spans the whole municipal area: Soweto, the southern suburbs and the inner city, as well as the northern suburbs.

Only within limits. A detour has to actually cut your exposure to be offered, and anything dramatically longer than the direct route gets rejected even when it carries less risk. In practice most lower-risk routes across Johannesburg add a few minutes.

Yes. The N1, N3, N12 and N17 are all mapped, and the major freeways carry protective ratings so the app will not push you off a freeway onto side roads to shave a score.

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