Where was it issued?
Which system applies
AARTO applies in the municipalities named in the 2026 proclamations and nowhere else. Pick the one printed on your notice; if it is not listed, you are on the Criminal Procedure Act route.
62 municipalities · type to narrow
Until you choose, treat every AARTO figure on this page as conditional. It is wrong for most of the country.
Common questions
The questions readers actually arrive with, answered from the instruments themselves. Where the law is silent, or where a document we would need is not published anywhere we can reach, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
The figures behind the answers
Four numbers the answers below rely on
Every one is read from the instrument cited under it. None of them is the price of an offence — this site does not hold that schedule.
- 50%Discount on the penalty amountsection 17(1)(d)
- 32 daysThe discount windowregulation 17(2)
- 10 daysBefore a posted document counts as servedsection 30(2)
- 62Municipalities under AARTOProclamation 323 of 2026
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The number everyone gets wrong
There are two demerit-point thresholds, and the one in circulation is the older one
This is the most checkable figure in the market and the one most widely misquoted. Both totals below are read from the instrument that states them; which one governs a matter depends on when that matter began and where.
- 15The threshold under the regulations now in force — disqualification follows on exceeding it, not on reaching itregulation 20(6); section 29(d)
- 12The threshold under the repealed regulations, which still governs a matter that began before the current ones took effectregulation 24(3) of the 2008 regulations
- 3Months of disqualification for every point above the thresholdsection 25(2)(a)
The demerit-points system is fully prescribed — the threshold, the reduction rules and the disqualification arithmetic are all written into the regulations. In the areas proclaimed in 2026 it is nevertheless not operative: the sections of the Act that attach a consequence to a demerit point were not brought into operation there. Two metros are the exception, and have run the system since the 2008-series commencements. So a points figure quoted for the rest of the country describes a rule that exists on paper and imposes nothing.
A matter that had already begun in either of those two metros before the 2026 regulations took effect is concluded under the repealed 2008 regulations, not the new ones. Their disqualification threshold is a different number, their schedule of offences is a different document, and several classes of infringer were excluded from the discount entirely under them. Reading such a matter with the 2026 rules gives the wrong answer at almost every step.
So the honest answer to “how many points until I lose my licence” has three parts, and only the third of them is a number: first, whether a demerit point does anything at all where your notice was issued; second, which set of regulations your matter is being concluded under; and only then the total itself. Which of those applies to you is settled by the municipality printed on the document, not by the offence.
WHAT THIS SITE DOES NOT HAVE
The two questions this site answers by saying it cannot
They are the two most-asked questions in this market, and an invented answer to either would be worse than none.
The charge book
The charge book is not published anywhere we can reach
The amounts, penalty units and demerit points for individual offences live in Schedule 3 to the AARTO Regulations, 2026. That schedule is published in later parts of the Government Gazette issue that carries the regulations, and those parts do not resolve from any source tried — the national government site, the AARTO sites and the public gazette archives alike. So this site does not hold the charge book, and it will not reproduce one from a third-party transcription: a per-offence amount copied off another website is exactly the kind of figure that is wrong for a year before anyone notices.
The amount for your own matter is printed on your own notice, and it is the binding one. What this site can tell you is how that amount is arrived at, what the discount does to it, and which fee attaches at which stage.
AARTO Regulations, 2026 (GN R.7646) Schedule 3 (parts 2-8 of GG 54922) — GG 54922 (Regulation Gazette), 30 June 2026, part 1 of 8
Outside AARTO
Outside AARTO there is no national fine schedule at all
The Criminal Procedure Act supplies the mechanism for an out-of-court traffic penalty — a written notice or a summons, endorsed with an option to admit guilt and pay — but it fixes no amount. The amount is determined by the magistrate for the district, or set case by case within a ceiling that a separate ministerial notice fixes. There is therefore no such thing as “the South African traffic fine” outside an AARTO area, and a single national figure cannot be quoted honestly.
Figures for this route that circulate on other sites come from a ministerial notice more than a decade old, and this site does not repeat them. The amount that applies to you is the one endorsed on your notice or summons by the authority that issued it.
Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, ss.56, 57 · Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act 46 of 1998, N/A — as amended by Act 4 of 2019; consolidation to 30 June 2010 vendored, Amendment Act 4/2019 full text vendored
If a question you arrived with is not here, it is probably because the honest answer depends on which municipality issued your notice. The selector at the top of this page settles that first.
Verification status
Nobody has signed these figures off
Every value on this site is recorded as research: transcribed from the cited instrument, and not yet checked by the reviewer who is accountable for it. That is a statement about this site, not about the instruments. Where a figure decides something for you, read it against the citation printed beside it.