Question 1

How do I know whether my fine is an AARTO fine?

Accepted Answer

By the municipality that issued it, not by the offence. AARTO applies in a named list of municipalities and nowhere else — everywhere else the ordinary Criminal Procedure Act route applies, which uses different documents and has no infringement notice, no courtesy letter and no enforcement order. The issuing authority is printed on the paperwork; the list of areas is on the "Is AARTO in force" page, and the scope selector at the top of these pages resolves it.

Question 2

Do traffic fines expire in South Africa?

Accepted Answer

Under AARTO, no — and the Act says so in terms: the laws on prescription do not apply to penalties and fees payable under it, and they may be collected at any time. That is the opposite of what most people assume, and it is the single most counter-intuitive rule in this market. Outside an AARTO area the ordinary law of prescription applies instead, and this site does not model that branch.

Question 3

I got an SMS about a fine. Is it genuine?

Accepted Answer

Treat the SMS as a prompt, not as proof. Electronic service is a lawful way to serve an AARTO document, so a genuine notification by SMS is possible — which is exactly what makes the impersonation attempts effective. The safe move is never to pay from a link in the message: go to the official service or the issuing authority yourself, look the matter up by your own reference, and pay there. This site never asks for your identity number, licence number or notice reference, and it renders no lookup form.

Question 4

How much is the fine for my offence?

Accepted Answer

This site cannot tell you, and it says so rather than guessing. The amounts are set offence by offence in Schedule 3 to the AARTO Regulations, 2026, which is published in parts of the Government Gazette that are not retrievable from any channel tried — so the charge book that prices an individual offence is not held here. What is held, and what this site does render, is the arithmetic that turns penalty units into an amount and the discount rule that applies to it. The binding figure for your matter is the one on your own notice.

Question 5

Am I getting demerit points?

Accepted Answer

Almost certainly not yet, and this is the most widely mis-reported thing about the 2026 rollout. The demerit-points system is fully prescribed in the regulations — the threshold, the reduction rules and the disqualification arithmetic are all written down — but the sections of the Act that give points a legal consequence were not brought into operation in the areas proclaimed in 2026. Two metros are the exception: the system has run there since the 2008-series commencements.

Question 6

If my representation is rejected, do I lose the discount?

Accepted Answer

No, and this is the rule almost nothing else in this market carries. Where a representation is rejected, the regulations reopen the discounted amount for a fresh window that runs from the day the result is deemed served — so a reader who used the process rather than paying immediately is not punished for having used it. A further window opens again on the outcome of an appeal or a review. What a rejection does attract is the representations fee, which is its own charge with its own paragraph in the schedule. The one thing that forfeits the discount outright is an arrangement to pay in instalments: take those and the full penalty and the applicable fees become payable, which is the opposite of what most people expect an instalment plan to do.

Question 7

How many demerit points before a licence is suspended?

Accepted Answer

The threshold is higher than the figure almost every South African source repeats. The number in wide circulation is the one the 2008-series regulations carried; the regulations now in force prescribe a different, higher total, and disqualification follows on exceeding that total rather than on reaching it. Both figures are rendered straight from the instruments in the demerit-points section of the AARTO-status page, along with the length of the disqualification, which is worked out per point above the threshold. Two things matter more than the number itself. In most of the country no commenced section attaches any consequence to a demerit point at all. And a matter that began in one of the two metros before the current regulations took effect is concluded under the older ones, whose threshold is the older figure.

Question 8

Does paying an AARTO fine admit guilt?

Accepted Answer

Paying ends the matter administratively rather than by way of a court conviction. What it forecloses is your own opportunity to make a representation about the infringement, because the representation route runs on the same clock as the discount. If you intend to dispute the matter, the order of operations matters: make the representation first, and be aware that a rejected representation attracts its own fee.

Question 9

What happens if I ignore an AARTO infringement notice?

Accepted Answer

The chain continues without you. A courtesy letter follows, with its own fee and its own clock; then an enforcement order, with another fee. Once an enforcement order stands unsatisfied the practical consequence is not a knock at the door — it is that no driving licence, professional driving permit, road-traffic or transport permit, or licence disc may be issued to you or for a vehicle registered in your name until the order is complied with or revoked. Read together with the no-prescription rule above, that has no expiry date.

Question 10

What is the admission-of-guilt fine outside an AARTO area?

Accepted Answer

There is no national answer, and any site that gives you one is inventing it. The Criminal Procedure Act provides the mechanism — a written notice or a summons, endorsed with an admission-of-guilt option — but the amount is determined by the magistrate for that district, or set case by case within a ceiling. Figures circulating online come from a Minister's notice more than a decade old and are not published here as though they were current.

Common questions

Four numbers the answers below rely on

There are two demerit-point thresholds, and the one in circulation is the older one

The two questions this site answers by saying it cannot

The charge book is not published anywhere we can reach

Outside AARTO there is no national fine schedule at all

Nobody has signed these figures off