With the festive road rush to holiday destinations almost upon us, motorists are encouraged by the traffic authorities to check and pay outstanding fines.
The Road Traffic Infringement Agency has launched a campaign for the upcoming season to also educate drivers on how to pay, or object to, their fines.
The “Know Your Traffic Fines Status” campaign is being operated across the county at various mobile checkpoints for motorists to find out what they owe on Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AartoAct) fines.
According to the agency, the national campaign “seeks to encourage positive driver behaviour, voluntary compliance with road traffic laws, curb road fatalities, penalise and rehabilitate repeat offenders and contribute towards making South African roads safer.”
The Aarto process takes road users through the available options to help them manage their infringement status. Under the Aarto Act, within the first 32 days of receiving an infringement notice, motorists have the following five options to exercise:
Make a representation to dispute a traffic infringement.
Nominate a different driver.
Apply for revocation of an enforcement order.
Arrange to pay for infringements in instalments.
Elect to be tried in court.
During this festive season, the Aarto mobile offices will be visiting driving licence testing centres, taxi ranks, and fuel stations in various municipalities across the country:
December 15: At the Engen garage, N1 north, Kransdorp, KwaZulu-Natal
December 16: R40, Marite, Mpumalanga.
December 16 to 21: At Musina Checkpoint, Limpopo.
The agency has also warned of roadblocks on December 16, 23 and 30 with threats of arrest for guilty motorists.
However, Howard Dembovsky, national chairperson of Justice Project South Africa, said the warning of dates, times and locations of such operations causes huge traffic jams which tend to make motorists to take a different route when the locations of massive roadblocks make their way on to live social media platforms like Twitter or even on to GPS navigation applications and devices which employ “live traffic” information.
The take-home message for all motorists, he said, should be that driving under the influence of an intoxicating substance is not only against the law, but is extremely dangerous.
If those who can’t resist the temptation to spread “warnings” on social media really want to have a positive effect, then perhaps they should consider spreading this message:
“Driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs is extremely dangerous and could easily lead to injury or death. Alcohol enforcement operations can and do take place anytime, anywhere and if you are caught, you will face prosecution which will earn you a 10-year criminal record if you are convicted,” Dembovsky said.
The Road Traffic Management Corporation’s annual road death statistics for January to December 2016 show that 14071 people died on South African roads, a 9% increase on the 2015 figure of 12944.
Motorists are expected to settle their outstanding traffic fines before travelling said FNB Connect, through which fines can be paid.
The volume of payments through the bank has regularly shown a significant rise around the festive season, said Shadrack Palmer, chief commercial officer at FNB Connect.
Traffic fine payments through FNB, he said, have increased by 68% from 2016 to 2017. Roughly 14% of payments are made via the FNB app, introduced in March this year, with 77% through online banking and 9% at ATMs.
@annacox