Believe It Or Not, Only 2% of the City’s traffic Violations Are Committed by Buses
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">The Audit of the City of Buenos Aires audited the Department of Management Violations and noted that of all the fines that had been issued, the ones corresponding to bus companies represented a small percentage. "Inconsistencies, arbitrariness, and an unfair criteria" for the formulation and implementation of sanctions was detected. Fines were thrown out without proof.</span></p> <div> </div>
The Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) argues that "it is notorious and of public knowledge the daily indiscretions committed by the buses in the City." However, it noted that in the records of the Directorate General of Administration Offences (DGAI), out of 2,420,688 traffic violations, the public transport of passengers represents a "very small percentage, only 2%."
According to the audit, this has to do with the General Administration of Administrative Offences or Fault Control Unit, as the percentage of cultivated fines derived prior to analysis of the drivers (which may subsequently cancel them or apply them). For AGCBA, this has to do with "policies within the Directorate General of Road Safety".
The audit goes on to say that "there is a subjective assessment of those behaviors that cause traffic violations, both in writing the reports as well as their resolution." It should be noted that during the period under review, 2010, 100 bus companies were identified, they had 17,152 records. It’s important to point out that a record is not the same as a fine, because a record may contain more than one offense.
This "subjectivity" means that similar situations are resolved differently. In fact, AGCBA exhibited eight samples in which it found "inconsistencies, arbitrariness, and verification of dissimilar criteria."
The case that is most striking is the offender who said he was "unable to pay violations and requested consideration. Despite not having provided evidence or denying the fines, the controller decided to close the proceedings because there was something "missing". Auditors added that this file contained 36 offense records, of which the company paid only two, for a total of $360. The remaining was filed for lack of offense (18) and formal defects (16).
The report, adopted this year, indicates that acting agents do not write the records properly, ambiguities, inaccuracies, faulty texts, and formal errors are observed, even "denoting ignorance of current legislation on the matter." Thus it happened that 41% of the tax assessments were filed by prescription. Among other causes, "difficulties of giving notice were found."
In fact, violations resolved by the "fault controllers" were applied only in 37% of cases, 9% were dismissed and were filed because the records were poorly made, 41% were filed by prescription of the offense, 4% were dropped for lack of failure and 4% were given a warning.
Finally, AGCBA requested that the Directorate General of Traffic Safety implement training for manual preparation of records of violations "in order to not incur in excessive amounts of formal defects.”