Gauteng · live coverage
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.
What the data looks like here
828 mapped areas across Johannesburg.
Every area is rated three times over, once each for daytime, evening and night, because risk in South African metros does not hold still across a day. The split below is how Johannesburg's 828 zones fall across the bands at their highest rating.
Figures read directly from the live database, not typed by hand. The lowest band means an area was checked and carries no routing penalty, which is different from an area we have no data for.
Driving here
What matters on Johannesburg's roads
- The M1 and M2 through the inner city carry more flagged stretches than anywhere else in the country. Most of it is smash-and-grab and robbery at off-ramps and traffic lights.
- Ratings move more between day and night here than in any other metro we cover. Several roads that carry no penalty at midday sit in the top band after 19:30.
- 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
Common questions about Johannesburg
Does Tsamaya cover Soweto and the southern suburbs?
Yes. Coverage spans the whole municipal area: Soweto, the southern suburbs and the inner city, as well as the northern suburbs.
Will it route me the long way round?
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 is safer. In practice most lower-risk routes across Johannesburg add a few minutes.
Does it work on the highways out of Joburg?
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.
Drive Johannesburg with the risk on the map.
Tsamaya is free and currently in beta on iPhone. Ask for an invite and we'll send you a TestFlight link.