The Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) was expected to be implemented from 1 April this year.
According to Aarto, the implementation would make roads safer, and among other things, it will establish a procedure for the effective and expeditious adjudication of infringements.
Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) explained that the system will mean drivers accumulate points for the infringements they commit.
RTIA further outlined that every person starts with 0 points, and the maximum permissible number of points is 12. A person is allowed to drive until he/she has 12 points. Every point exceeding 12 points results in a three-month suspension of their driver’s licence. One point is reduced every three months if no further contraventions occur. A licence will be cancelled when it has been suspended for the third time.
However, the long wait and the many headaches have caused a delay in the National roll-out of the system.
Deputy Minister of Transport Elizabeth Dipuo Peters said in her budget speech in May that, “We are appealing to the Portfolio Committee to expedite the processing of this Amendment, which will see the introduction of the demerit system whereby infringers stand to be arrested and even lose their driver’s licences. ”
Aarto has been piloted in Tshwane since 2008 and Johannesburg since 2009, but the points demerit system has not been implemented. This will not happen until Aarto is implemented nationally.
Justice Project South Africa national chairman Howard Dembovsky commented, “No ‘pilot’ of anything should have taken eight years to still not find a way to a national roll-out, and the endless false starts which have typified this implementation have not assisted anyone.”
The Automobile Association stated that among the many reasons for these delays are issues relating to the delivery of infringement notices. The established concept of an ‘infringement’ is a traffic violation which can be dealt with administratively (such as speeding or talking on your cellphone while driving), as opposed to an ‘offence’ which remains a criminal offence (such as drunk driving, which is indistinguishable from any other criminal offence, and which requires a court appearance).
The AA, therefore, calls on the Department of Transport to give South Africans a firm and concrete date for the implementation of Aarto, and to stick to it. Their credibility and that of the system as a whole is now at stake.
Dembovsky added, “We do, however, find ourselves having to agree with our counterparts in the AA and elsewhere in civil society in calling for the Department of Transport “to take significant steps to ensure the system is implemented or concede to the public that it probably will never materialise”.
