The Portfolio Committee on Transport has accepted the final amendments on the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AARTO) Bill.
The Bill will now go to the National Assembly for concurrence and will then be ready to be signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
South Africa is a signatory to the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety, 2011 to 2020 and expected to reduce road deaths by 50%.
“As a country, we are experiencing an average of just under 14 000 deaths per annum, which equates to about 38 people every single day, who lose their lives on our roads,” says Minister of Transport, Dr Blade Nzimande.
“Through AARTO, we are putting in place an effective, efficient and streamlined system that will take routine traffic offences out of the over-stretched court system and create incentives that increases compliance to road traffic laws, ”
He adds that AARTO will enable government to:
* Overcome the wide discrepancies in the penalties imposed by different magistrates (or applied in different jurisdictions) for the same types of traffic violations;
nsure uniformity in the different sentencing norms for the majority of serious traffic violations which are generally too low to be adequately prohibitive;
nsure that sentences are more appropriately attuned to the differential capacity of offenders to pay – hence creating the need for alternative sentencing options;
e tough on those who do not pay fines imposed and those who ignore summonses to appear in court.
Under AARTO, fines and penalties will be standardised for all traffic violations and will give effect to the points demerit system.