The implementation of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) system has been delayed.
Speaking at the recent NADAConnect conference in Cape Town, Brandon Cohen, Motus Group Governance and Compliance Lead, said that the national Department of Transport (DoT) and the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) are still far behind where they were supposed to be at this point with the rollout of Aarto.
Piloted in the Johannesburg and Tshwane municipalities since 2008, the demerit system was supposed to launch on 1 July this year across all 245 municipalities and seven metros in the country.
However, in a closed email to industry participants including Cohen, the DoT’s chief director of road regulation, Advocate Johannes Makgatho, said that the timeline has been adjusted and only phase two of the Aarto rollout will commence in July, which will include bringing smaller municipalities on board.
By the end of September 2024, Makgatho said the DoT will commence with the third and final phase of the Aarto introduction, which is bringing the last 134 micro and rural municipalities on board.
This last step of the process will be the most time-consuming, as it will involve representatives of the DoT and RTIA travelling to each municipality to check if they meet the requirements of supporting Aarto, such as having trained staff, functional computer systems, internet access, and access to the Road Traffic Management Corporation’s (RTMC) national database.
“This magically will be done at 134 different municipalities by September, and then what they want to do is mid-2025 introduce demerits [to the entire country],” said Cohen.
26 years and counting
The legal expert has cast doubt on this extended timeframe, stating that Motus “doesn’t believe it’s going to actually happen” due to the complexity of the Aarto system and the fact that it was first tabled over 26 years ago in 1998 and is still bogged down by administrative and legal issues to this day.
For example, just recently, it was revealed that the RTIA, which is responsible for the management of Aarto, racked up a substantial debt to the South African Post Office (SAPO).
This, because the agency sent out a batch of outdated payment-demand notices to motorists which were subsequently ignored as they had already expired by the time they were delivered, and the RTIA therefore had to forfeit the income it would have derived from these fines and couldn’t pay what it owed to the SAPO.
Furthermore, getting all the country’s municipalities on board will be a massive challenge in and of itself, as major metros like Cape Town have openly stated they will fight tooth and nail to avoid executing the system in their jurisdiction as it will force them to funnel large portions of revenue to the RTIA while being solely responsible for flipping the bill to implement Aarto.
As per JP Smith, Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for safety and security, the city plans to leverage legislative amendments to achieve its goal of not implementing Aarto to its full extent.
These amendments allow municipalities, where provincial laws or municipal by-laws cover the same contraventions, to elect whether they use either the pre-existing laws or Aarto for enforcement.
If successful, the city will only make use of Aarto for speed enforcement, while other violations will be dealt with by the relevant local municipality.
Smith, who said the city’s interpretation of the law had been confirmed by its legal counsel, also recommended that other municipalities around the country adopt a similar framework.
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