One day when we got to the office, we found on the floor, a paper that somone had slid under the door. It had a photo of a car on it along with some "Infringement Particulars" . It read as follows "The infringer, as idendified, while operating a vehicle on a public road, etc, etc, committed the following infringement(s) as shown by charge code 4549. The "charge code" read; "operated a vehicle at a speed of 91km/hr which is in excess of the speed limit of 80km/hr as was indicated in the prescribed manner on a road traffic sign". Penalty: R750. I though to myself, wow, some poor guy got nailed by the traffic camera and is faced with a pretty stiff fine. Upon a closer inspection of the photo, I thought to myself, wait a minute, that is the rear view of our car, our little Nissan Tiida, on the motorway, most likely traveling at a high rate of speed right past the traffic camera. Sharon sometimes reminds me to slow down and observe the speed limit signs more closely. Maybe I should have listened to her more closely.... In my defense, we have found that on the motorway (freeway) the speed limit signs go from 80km/hr to 120km/hr and back to 80km/hr and maybe down to 60km/hr within a distance of less than a kilometer, especially in construction zones. To make matters worse we have to either get out of the way or try to keep up with the Mercedes, BMW.s and Audi's that always seem to be speeding along about 30 or 40 km/hr faster than the speed limits.
Here is how it works: The cameras, which lurk along most of the streets and motorways in Joburg, snap the photo of a car, tagging it if it is speeding, or running a red light, etc.(like some cities back in the U.S.) The "infringement" (ticket) is sent to the church area office fleet manager, identified as to who the car is assigned to.The fleet manager, in turn, delivers the infringement to the infringer (me, in this case) with instructions to take it to the cashier and pay it.
I now find myself obeying the traffic laws more closely for obvious reasons. Incidently, the R750 penalty was discounted R375, so we only had to pay R375. (the exchange is currently about 7 rand to the U.S. dollar) Maybe it was because I was a first time offender.I probably won't get off that easy next time.
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