Repeat road offenders to lose licences

IN the wake of the increased rate of carnage on the roads this festive season and in previous years, the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) joins the National Department of Transport in a bid to manage delinquent drivers on South Africa’s roads.

RTIA is responsible for the rolling out of the much talked about Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AARTO) Act. The Act s main objective is to improve compliance and safer driving behaviour in order to reduce road accidents by implementing the points demerit system, said RTIA spokeswoman, Zukisa Nduneni.

She said the agency will help maximise the efforts to reduce the carnage on the roads by fully implementing the AARTO Act this year.

Life will get tougher for delinquent drivers because through this Act, government will implement stringent measures including demerit points system for delinquent drivers to curb fatalities caused by irresponsible driving. Any driver who accumulates 12 demerit points will have his or her licence suspended for three months.

All drivers will be affected by this law and for those whom driving is their daily job it will have significant socioeconomic consequences. If they continuously violate traffic laws they might end up without the basic tool of their trade which is the Drivers Licence,” she said.

Nduneni said RTIA was of the view that the death toll over the festive season was still alarmingly high in spite of the efforts role players such as law enforcement have done.

In our view this is illustrative of the fact that sustaining safer roads is a culture and behavioural orientation many of our drivers are yet to master. Drunken driving and speeding offences which have been prevalent over the festive season still show the delinquent and irresponsible nature of our road users in spite of the educational awareness efforts the country continuously embark upon. Indeed the solution of harsher recourse through the roll-out of the point demerit system is required with more urgency,” she said.

RTIA s efforts of having the AARTO Act amended through the AARTO Amendment Bill No. 46 of 1998, she said, aims at helping authorities and law enforcement to achieve efficient and financially sustainable methods of managing road traffic offenders.

Not only does RTIA seek to implement a more decisive intervention for dealing with delinquent repeat offenders, but further empowers road users and enforcers to take full charge of their behaviour and authority to be on the roads, she said.

Further to this, Nduneni added, RTIA, through the implementation of the AARTO Act offers a decriminalised environment for management of road traffic offences as well as opportunities for rehabilitation through its driver rehabilitation programmes.

It is envisaged that drivers will be weary of being demerited to a point of losing their licenses as many use these for daily livelihoods. The inconvenience of undergoing the process of acquiring the drivers’ licence all over again should be deterrent enough to bring a driver to a better sense of driving.”

Regarding the effects of the demerit system, Nduneni said it was a carrot and stick effect whereby good behaviour and voluntary compliance was rewarded whilst noncompliance was harshly penalised.

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