The new Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act will not fix South Africa’s high road accident and fatality rates because it fails to address the root cause of the matter, namely that South Africans are simply very bad drivers.
This is the opinion of multiple experts within the transport sector, who have been voicing their concerns over the new Aarto Act following the announcement that it has been declared legal by the Constitutional Court.
Underlying causes
In an interview with Cape Talk, Accident Expert Craig Proctor-Parker said that the idea of a driver demerit system in and of itself isn’t bad, but rather that he believes it will not work in South Africa.
The amended Aarto Act has been the subject of controversy since it was first made public in 2019, as it stipulates a new demerit point system that penalizes motorists for various traffic offences with a fine or a number of points, which can result in the suspension or even the complete removal of one’s licence.
The rollout of the Act was challenged by the Organization Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) in 2022, which led to the Act being ruled invalid and unconstitutional by the Pretoria High Court, a verdict that was overturned by the Constitutional Court last week.
Proctor-Parker echoed the Pretoria court’s sentiment that much of road safety is the responsibility of sound driver judgement – something which the average South African motorist lacks due to poor driver training.
“That’s the greater problem that we have. We need to have that sense of driver training from your learner’s licence through to your driver’s that is far more detailed and far more astute than it currently is,” he said.
“Aarto is certainly, to be polite, going to be very difficult to bring into place and to operate properly and to have the effect that they are saying it’s going to have.”
While similar legislation has proven effective in countries like Australia and the UK, these systems only work because they are strictly enforced.
The Act also fails to address the high number of people on the roads that either do not have a licence, or obtained one through illegal means, wrote MyBroadband.
MasterDrive CEO Eugene Herbert expressed a similar view in an opinion piece on News24, where he argued that Aarto will require citizens to have faith in the system, which is unlikely with the opportunity for corruption that the fine system allows for.
“There are concerns about too much opportunity for corruption to creep into Aarto and too many instances where additional fees make the demerit system more of an income generator than a road safety strategy,” said Herbert.
He also argued that the system will create an administrative nightmare in a legal system already bogged down by extensive legislation.
Keyword: Aarto’s strict driving rules won’t fix South Africa’s bad drivers