AARTO Act - offences and penalties

What's new?
A person, alleged to have committed an offence, is served with a ticket (infringement notice) carrying a spot fine, in much the same way as before. A handwritten form, describing the offence, is handed to the driver, or affixed to the vehicle, at the time of the offence. In the case of a camera recorded infringement, it is served by registered mail.

What has changed is:

Options
Except for serious offences, where there is no option but to appear in court, you may:

Time allowed for post
Whenever an infringement notice, a follow-up "courtesy letter" or, eventually, an enforcement order is sent by registered mail, it is regarded as having been served ten days after posting it.

The system, of necessity, has to be time sensitive, in that it must allow for certain time periods to lapse before progressing to the next step of the sequence of events. Yet, it makes extensive use of the sluggish and hardly reliable postal service. In the light of time delays involved in postal communication, the efficacy of the system is debatable, more especially since many offenders in this country are not so easily contactable at a postal address.

Offences
Traffic violations are divided into the following three groups according to severity:

Under Section 17 (5) of the Act it is an offence to allow a person to drive a motor vehicle without having acsertained his or her full names, acceptable identification and residential and postal address. Failure to be able to provide these details is punishable by up to a year's imprisonment or a fine of R750 or both. The need to know who drove what, where and when, makes it all the more vital for operators to implement a Driver's Daily Log> system.

Penalties
For each violation, the Table of offences and penalties> indicates the admission of guilt fine and the number of demerit points, if any.

It should be remembered that the fine listed is subject to the 50% discount if paid within 32 days and that in the case of an operator being a company or closed corporation, the fine, listed, is tripled.

Also, the unroadworthy fines for vehicles required to undergo annual roadworthy certification are higher than for other vehicles.

An operator can be charged, either with the offence committed or, alternatively, in a case such as a driver not having an appropriate PrDP, for failing in his duty to exercise proper control over drivers.

A free CD containing the complete AARTO Act, the Amendments and Regulations is available with the Rules of the Road>