Johannesburg  - A South African man is serving an 18-month jail term for running a red light, a sentence a judge in his case admitted was "harsh."

The machine operator from KwaZulu-Natal province was convicted of reckless and negligent driving after he used a turning lane to overtake a queue of cars and then jumped the light, Johannesburg-based The Star daily newspaper reported.

When traffic officers at the scene stopped the father of four and said they wanted to arrest him, the driver told them to fine him instead and sped off.

The man later said he was racing to the side of his sick wife - an explanation that received short shrift in court, where he was sentenced to three years in jail, with half of the term suspended for five years.

On Wednesday, he was refused leave to appeal his sentence by the High Court in the port city of Durban. "Perhaps it's high time for someone to go to jail (for this offence)," Judge Herbert Msimang said.

While the sentence was "harsh", it was not unduly so, the judge was quoted as saying.

South Africa's has among the highest rates of road fatalities in the world. Some 14,200 people are killed on the roads each year. (dpa)