AARTO Explained

When we first heard of AARTO we thought it was one of the several arts festivals taking place in South Africa. Well unfortunately AARTO is no festival as many motorists in Johannesburg and Pretoria will tell you.

AARTO is the abbreviation for the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act and is the new “administrator” of the National Road Traffic Act. In layman's terms it means that AARTO is responsible for the administration, collection and adjudication of fines related to road traffic offenses.

This act was born in 1998 and amended several times during the past 12 years. The amended acts are act 22 of 1999, act 24 of 2000 and act 72 of 2002. The relevant regulations and schedules were published on 16 July 2008 in government gazette notice 31242.

AARTO was initially set to roll out nationally on 1 November 2010 and this was published in government gazette notice 33114 on 16 April 2010 but recently retracted by President Jacob Zuma in government gazette notice 33341 on 30 June 2010. This was as a result of pressure by the Cape Metropolitan Council alleging that there were too many loopholes and administrative implications in the new act. The RTMC (Road Traffic Management Corporation) however indicated that the act will be implemented nationally on the 1^st of April 2011. It must be stressed that in the meantime AARTO remains effective in Johannesburg and Pretoria without the demerit points.

According to section 1 of the act its purpose is to;

(a) to encourage compliance with the national and provincial laws, municipal by-laws relating to road traffic and to promote road traffic safety;

(b) to encourage the payment of penalties imposed for infringements and to allow alleged minor infringers to make representations;

(c) to establish a procedure for the effective and expeditious adjudication of infringements;

(d) to alleviate the burden on the courts of trying offenders for infringements;

(e) to penalize drivers and operators who are guilty of infringements or offences through the imposition of demerit points leading to the suspension and cancellation of driving licences, professional driving permits or operator cards;

(f) to reward law-abiding behaviour by reducing demerit points where they have been incurred if infringements or offences are not committed over specified periods;

(g) to establish an agency to support the law enforcement and judicial authorities and to undertake the administrative adjudication process; and

(h) to strengthen co-operation between the prosecuting and law enforcement authorities by establishing a board to govern the agency.

You may at this stage ask what the big deal is since you will carry on ignoring the fines received by mail or simply storm into the office of the public prosecutor and frustrate the poor official with endless stories of incompetence, victimization or that your wife was in labour. Unfortunately those days are over and traffic fines are now combined with a demerit point system.

What this means is that demerit points will be allocated for traffic fines up to a maximum of 12 points. As soon 12 points are exceeded your driver’s license will be suspended for a period of three months for each point above 12. So if you have 10 points on your driver’s license and you receive a fine coupled with five demerit points, your license to operate a vehicle will be suspended for a period of nine months. Should your license be suspended for a third time it will be canceled by the authorities and you may never again drive a vehicle, unless you again apply for and is issued with a license.

PHASE 4 - THE WARRANT OF EXECUTION