Demerit system motivated by safety or revenue generation?

The long-gestating road traffic demerit system is set to be rolled out “soon”, according to an announcement last week in Parliament by the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA). The system falls under the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) and is intended to promote road safety. But the recent amendments and proposed amendments actually remove aspects that were crafted to change behaviour and that would have served as a deterrent, said Gavin Kelly, technical and operations manager at the Road Freight Association (RFA). He told FTW: “The Act is now only concerned with generating revenue. “Following on the pilot project in Gauteng, the findings were crafted into the recent set of amendments. The focus has been on dropping the costs to authorities to serve the infringement notices while the final deterrent of seizing property/vehicles/licences and related permits has also been removed.” The potential impact of the demerit system, according to Kelly, is higher transport costs – ultimately transferred to the consumer – due to loss of drivers, vehicles being taken off the roads, costs related to administering an offence tracking system, labour challenges and “huge costs related to training and retraining of drivers”, he said. He believes this could also lead to heightened corruption at various authority levels and bottlenecks in licensing processes. Kelly was also concerned that while there had been consultation with industry around this system, many of the consultations had resulted in little progress or huge delays in implementation. “The core issues relating to driver points, vehicle points and access to information have not been satisfactorily resolved. Essentially, the authorities are trying to place the whole administration of the Act on the shoulders of business.” He added that factors relating to increased corruption had not been addressed. Mike Brews from Horizon Underwriting Managers noted that while overall this system was positive for the transport industry, some transporters may have to close their doors as their margins may already be too tight to handle the potential additional costs. He added: “I understand that this may increase costs but if this has a positive effect elsewhere – such as reducing losses as a result of fewer accidents – the final result should be positive.” He agreed with Kelly that proper policing would be an issue. “We have to be aware of the fact that drivers may continue to drive even if they have been banned for a period.” Brews pointed out that fleet owners would have to monitor their drivers’ demerits very closely as they could be held accountable to the cargo owners for allowing illegal drivers. Nerisha Besesar, associate in the litigation department of Shepstone & Wylie, pointed out that countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia had achieved great successes with road safety based on the implementation of a demerit system. “That being said, studies have shown that road safety only increases for a very limited period from the time of implementation, usually between six and 12 months,” she said. Kelly added that in the mostly successful countries, revenue generation was not the driving factor, which is the case in South Africa. INSERT & CAPTION The core issues relating to driver points, vehicle points and access to information have not been satisfactorily resolved. – Gavin Kelly