Several clients who drive a company car, have recently been fined for about 509 EUR because they forgot to disclose the identity of the driver when paying an earlier traffic fine. This is a proposal for settlement, because if you do not accept, the fine will increase to more than double the amount.
If the car you drive is on your company’s name (as an employee or company director), the authorities are not aware who exactly committed the traffic violation. Already since 1996, it is a legal requirement for company car drivers to identify themselves to the authorities in this case. Legal entities and companies, both SMEs and large companies, need to comply.
The perception was often that if the initial fine was properly paid, there was no need to bother with the additional identification requirement. It is often also simply overlooked, as it is mentioned somewhere inconspicuously on the bottom of the police report. The driver had to be identified in the attached ‘dispute’ form, while the company had no intention to dispute the traffic violation itself. While the fine could easily be paid with a QR code, the form itself had to be printed and sent back by regular mail to the authorities.
Apparently, in 2021 for approx. 685.000 traffic violations, the actual driver was never identified. The authorities have started catching up with the outstanding violations and since January 2022 about 10.000 fines have been issued. This raised the necessary concern with company owners who see themselves now confronted with a hefty fine, sometimes even more than a year after the facts.
For this reason, we would recommend you to check on JUSTONWEB whether previous fines in your company’s name have been properly responded to. With every new traffic fine, we advise you to do this right away from now on as well to avoid being fined a second time for the same traffic violation.
If you try to access your company’s data via JUSTONWEB with your eID or itsme, you might see the following message appear the first time: “You do not have the necessary rights to access the offences on behalf of the company. Your company’s access manager can grant you access by assigning you the role of “Traffic fines” and/or “Criminal fines” through my e-Gov role management. This is a one-off action”.
This is where Belgian administration shows it true nature; your company would need to authorize you first before you are allowed access to an overview of your company’s traffic violations. This is done via the online eGov portal where all public mandates are managed, including the ones for ‘traffic fines’.
In case you are already a client and would need our assistance with this, feel free to get in touch!