South Africa’s First World Speeding Fine System
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The speeding fine system being used in South Africa is pretty impressive, very advanced and certainly puts the UK to shame. Whilst they’re not as kind about making the cameras highly visible, like they are in the UK, they certainly do make it easy for you to confirm it definitely was your car and cough up your cash.
Mum was lucky enough to get, as she put it, “a love letter” in the post today. The Jo’burg Metro police were kind enough to send her a lovely picture - in full colour - of her little car and a request to pay a R200 (£15.11/€20.04/$29.60 - what a pleasure) fine (See right).
Pretty impressive. But it’s gets better. You can pay it online at http://www.payfine.co.za . So you go along, enter your reference number, and lo and behold, you discover you’ve got other outstanding fines, each with full details of when, where you were, how fast you were going, how much the fine is and even a picture, which you can click and view a high res version of. A login isn’t required to view the fines either. All you need is a reference number.
Having the inquisitive mind I have, I thought I’d see if I could find other drivers who were nabbed around the same time. Well, it didn’t take me long to “decipher” the reference number system. At a guess, it appears to be:
2 characters / case # / department # / photo #I’m not too sure what the first two characters are, but it’s probably something like the camera number or just a sequential reference.
Now if we take into account the fact that speed cameras generally take 2 photos at a time, we can workout who got nabbed before and after mum, but incrementing/decrementing the case # by 1 and incrementing/decrementing the photo # by 2.
Mum’s reference number was E7/48710/172/097739. I soon worked out that the person before has ref E7/48709/172/097737 and the person after has ref E7/48711/172/097741.
Impressive, however I suspect it could be used to quash fines. The chap who got caught before mum has exactly the same time stamp for the offense as seconds are not taken into account (or they’re just set to 00 for ease).
The best thing about this system is that you can add pics to your family albums. If the speed camera had a polarising filter on the lens, then I could have added this one to the family album:
All in all, I’m pretty impressed with this and am very surprised we don’t have something like this in the UK. After all, the UK is the camera capital of the world. One thing is for sure: if mum had been in the UK, she’d have lost her license within a single week as each offense carries 3 penalty points and a fine. You lose your license on the 12th point.
Now let this be a lesson mum; the pedal on the right is in deed the “go faster” pedal, but Mr Plod isn’t too happy with you using it willy and indeed nilly. Maybe you should get one of those new Tata Nanos. You’ll never see the other side of 70km/h again 
Okay - GUILTY as charged
What!?!
What planet are you on?
Better than the UK?
So there money collection system is better than the UK is it? I implore you, please read on!
The cameras are highly visible in the UK for a reason. Do you want to know what it is?
It is to reduce accidents!
People with photo sensitive epilepsy are warned, thus reducing accidents.
Ask a South African road representative to pronounce that, and then ask him what it is, and then ask them if they care. If they cared they would have done something about it. Have they done anything about it? No! Again, do they care?
They are clearly defined in the UK because of regard to public safety and because of there societies values with regards to human life as a whole.
Better than the UK?!?
That is the whole point of speed camera, is it not? To ensure the safety of road users.
How many road users are there in the UK? How many of them have licences? How many of them were obtained illegally? How many of them have insurance? How many of them have an MOT? How many road accidents are there in the UK?
Now compare that against South African statistics!
What? Can’t hear you! Oh, that right. You don’t actually have anything to say right now do you?
The traffic system here is a joke! All they are good at is collecting the money! They do not care about the individual road user. At all!
In the UK they ensure that vehicles meet a minimum standard with regards to there maintenance, and they also enforce the fact that owners need to have insurance. You can not even buy or sell a car there unless you can prove that you have a licence, your car is roadworthy (unless declared SORN, in which case if you get caught driving it on the road, your dead meat) and that you have insurance. EVEN FOR CASH!
The only thing the government here cares about with regards to the sale of an asset here is if they get there share in tax! Yes! The government taxes you here for that! AM I WRONG?
If you get caught without any of those documents in the UK you will be arrested and your car will be scrapped. End of!
The police there don’t even carry guns because they do not run the risk of being shot at over it because it is not a barbaric, gun toting, chromatic, fascist banana state.
Bride one of them. I dare you!
Compare that to South Africa!
They also have a points systems to ensure that repeat offenders will have there licences revoked. And it is serious.
Yesterday (3/07/08) they announced that they will be launching a pilot scheme is Pretoria (Tshwane) that will have the same basis of ideals as the UK with regards to fines and the points system.
The problem with this is that apart from collecting the money from offenders they have nothing to ensure the safety of road users.
There was nothing about insurance, about vehicle maintenance, about reducing the risk with cameras, with targeting accident hotspots to ensure public safety. Nothing. Absolutely nothing!
So what have they actually done? They have taken there money collection agency up a notch. That all!
Better than the UK?
Man, grow a brain cell and get a life!
Hmmm, a bit of an aggressive and unhappy comment there Bruce: some very valid points raised and I agree with what you’ve said to an extent but I’m not going to enter a debate about it as I think you missed the gist of the article. I wasn’t talking about the various merits or the morality of speed cameras, road safety or law enforcement, but merely quoting on the efficiency of the fines system (interpret as a revenue system if you will - despite what you’d like to think, it’s a great earner in every country) which is in stark contrast to everything else in South Africa, and even the UK.
I’ve just been done for 74kph in a 60kph zone and fined 100 Rand.
A hundred bucks!!!??? Is that all?? And who said this is just to make money?
Hi Colin
As per your article the revenue system in this country does work very well.
Unfortunatly it is one of the only things that does.
As per Garry’s comment. I got knocked R700 for doing 111 Kph in a 100kph zone.
I could have just bribed the guy by paying him the R100 that he asked for as Garry probably did!
You tell me if I am wrong?!?