For some time now i have had my reservations about the legality of speeding fines here in Joburg, where I live. I received another one in the post the other day & it prompted me to take this a little further. But first let me tell you about the red flags & then I’ll tell you exactly what I am doing.

Big red flags

The biggest red flag is the so-called special discount if you make payment before a certain date. To me that screams “don’t question what we’re doing, simply do what we’re telling you to do”. But if you’re like me & you’ve never been good at being told what to do, it is simply a big red flag. It says to me that this is only about revenue generation

The other issue I have is the manner in which these so-called offences are recorded. For the most part these offences are recorded by people using speed reading cameras. BUT these people sit behind bushes & sundry similarly hidden spots along the road. Or they leave obscured cameras to do the work. You think there’s nothing wrong with that? Ok, consider this, if you went past a big sign that said “slow down to under the speed limit or the camera at the back of this sign is going to take a picture of your car & we will send you a speeding fine”, would you slow down to the limit or not?The stated goal of these speeding fines is to reduce the speed of motorists & hopefully the amount of accidents. So why hide the camera? Because the stated goal is not accurate, the real goal is revenue generation!

You think I am full of shit? Despite repeated calls from various civil rights groups, the JMPD & AARTO have refused to tell us how much money they are making. But from the little hints they have dropped we have some idea. Here is some info copied from this article:

• Director Gerneke goes on to say that the JMPD’s postage costs amount to R10 million a month.
• Well, at R18 per infringement notice (quoted to us by him) that equates to well over half a million individual fines per month, or 555,556 to be precise. And that is just for the fines issued by post, not those issued by traffic officers.
• Taking the calculation of the JMPD’s portion of the fine, which is the full portion of the discounted amount, and applying an average of the five fine amounts (already “discounted”), which works out to R437.50, this equates to a stunning R243, 055, 556  ornearly a quarter of a billion Rands per month.
• Even if only the lowest amount payable (R125 after “discount”) were to apply, this equates to R138, 888, 889 per month which, by way of example represents 86% of Cape Town’s ANNUAL traffic fine revenue in just one month.
• The JMPD has previously boasted a “compliance rate” of somewhere in the order of 50%-60% – largely thanks to their highly effective and intimidatory road block methodology where motorists are detained, mostly illegally and forced to pay their fines at the roadside under threat of arrest. This methodology has many Johannesburg motorists so terrified that they regularly ask us what will happen to them in a roadblock if they have outstanding AARTO fines.
• The AARTO Act has mechanisms in it to increase compliance, not decrease it and these mechanisms should be extremely effective, BUT they need to be applied correctly and therein lays the problem.
• If the collection or compliance rate has dropped by the claimed 67%, then this would mean that the JMPD is now only collecting 21.5% of all of the fines it issues. This is a little difficult to believe, but at the risk of calling them outright liars, this equates to somewhere in the order of R 29,861,111 per month and that represents a profit of nearly R20 million a month or R240 million a year of realised income, but before paying their contractors.
• This figure is of course grossly deflated but there will be no transparency emanating from the JMPD or the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality on this matter and only an independent audit will reveal all of the facts.
• If this were true and the alleged R27.50 per infringement notice issued “processing fee” were paid to “contractors”, then R15, 277, 778 would have to be paid to the “contractors” monthly because they are allegedly paid for all fines issued, not all fines paid.
• That would leave the JMPD with a mere R14.7 million a month to pay over to council. Is it any wonder that they are griping? Their contractors make way more than the council does under their claimed statistics!
• As was said by Mark Twain – “There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics.”
• With respect to Director Gerneke’s unilateral decision to cease using the legislated means of service of AARTO infringement notices, this is a clear and flagrant violation of legislation and legally invalidates every single notice that was sent out via standard surface mail.

So what have I decided to do?

I have sent AARTO a letter, asking for some clarification before I pay the last fine they sent me. Here is a copy of the letter I have just put in the post to them:

Update added 28 February, 2012.