RAF Act

This Act is read almost everywhere as claimant law, which is why an operator reads it and concludes it has no duties. It has three. The first is the bargain itself. Section 17(1) obliges the Fund to compensate anybody who suffers loss because a person was injured or killed by the driving of a motor vehicle, where that injury or death is due to the negligence or other wrongful act of the driver, of the owner, or of an employee of either in the performance of the job. Section 21 then abolishes the claim that loss would otherwise have founded: it does not lie against the owner of the vehicle, against the driver, or against the driver's employer. For a fleet that is the most valuable provision in South African road law, and it is also the reason a business should never settle a bodily injury claim across the counter. The claim it is settling does not exist. The bargain has edges. The Fund pays for bodily injury and death and for nothing else, so damage to the other vehicle, to its load, to a wall or to a pedestrian's property is untouched by this Act and remains the operator's own liability. A claim for loss of income or of support is calculated on an annual figure that cannot exceed the amount set under s 17(4)(c) and adjusted quarterly under s 17(4A), currently R390 664.00 a year with effect from 31 July 2026 under Board Notice 967 of 2026, GG 55097 of 31 July 2026, and the amount that applies is the one in the last notice before the accident. General damages are payable only for a serious injury, assessed under regulation 3 of the Road Accident Fund Regulations, 2008 by a medical practitioner registered under the Health Professions Act and reported on form RAF 4: 30 per cent Impairment of the Whole Person on the AMA Guides, or one of four narrative tests. Section 19 then lists the cases where the Fund pays nothing at all, two of which an operator needs to know about. Under s 19(a) there is no compensation where neither the driver nor the owner would have been liable but for s 21, so fault remains the gate and the operator's own record of the collision is the evidence of it. Under s 19(g) the Fund does not pay a person for emotional shock at having witnessed or been told of somebody else's injury, and s 21(2)(b) leaves exactly that claim lying against the owner, the driver and the employer. With s 21(2)(a), which revives the abolished claim where the Fund cannot pay, those are the two bodily injury exposures a fleet's own liability cover has to answer. The second duty is the one businesses miss. Section 22(1)(a) requires the owner of the vehicle, and the driver where the driver is not the owner, to furnish the Fund with particulars of the occurrence on the prescribed form, with the prescribed statements, within 14 days of any occurrence in which a person other than the driver was killed or injured, if that was reasonably possible. The prescribed form is form RAF 3 under regulation 7(3). Section 22(1)(b) puts the onus of proving that 14 days was not reasonably possible on the person who had to file. The third is the consequence of the second, and it is money. Section 25(1) lets the Fund recover what it paid from the owner of the vehicle, or from anybody whose negligence caused the loss, up to the whole amount the injured person could have recovered but for s 21. Against an owner it applies in four cases: allowing a driver to drive while knowing the driver was under the influence and that condition was the sole cause of the accident; allowing a driver to drive while knowing the driver held no licence for the vehicle or was breaching a learner's or restricted licence; the owner driving in either of those states; and the owner failing to comply with s 22(1) or knowingly giving the Fund false information, where the Fund was materially prejudiced. Section 25(3) extends the last three to anybody who was driving the vehicle, with or without the owner's consent. Where the injured person is your own employee being carried in your own vehicle, s 18(2) splits the bill with COIDA: the employee claims compensation under the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act and the Fund owes only the difference. Both reports fall due for one accident, the COIDA one within seven days under s 39 of that Act and the Fund's particulars within 14 days under this one, and s 23(4) ties the Director-General's COIDA right of recovery to the same prescription clock as the employee's own claim. This assessment covers the nine sections that bind the owner of a vehicle, a driver the owner permits to drive, or an employer whose employee is hurt on the road. It does not cover the Fund's governance, the Board's or the Minister's powers, the fuel levy, which is imposed under the Customs and Excise Act, the agent system under s 8, or the serious injury assessment machinery in regulation 3, because a business cannot act on any of those.

Transcribed 2026-10-20. Check the provision against the source before relying on it in a filing.

The assessment works through 43 questions across 16 duties, scored out of 309. Each answer generates the specific actions needed to close or prove that duty, and a “yes” only counts once its evidence is in, which is what makes the score defensible rather than self-declared.

The questions themselves are part of the assessment.