{"id":18580,"date":"2024-05-23T17:28:26","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T15:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=18580"},"modified":"2026-10-09T01:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T23:44:14","slug":"traffic-fines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/traffic-fines\/","title":{"rendered":"Traffic Fines in Egypt: Undisclosed Numbers and Unknown Revenues"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a corner of El-Fishawy caf\u00e9 in the Talbiya district, Mohamed Hassan and Khalil Samir (both in their forties, living in Talbiya in Giza Governorate, and former schoolmates) talked in a mood that mixed anger and regret. Mohamed apologised to his friend, saying: “Forgive me, I will pay back the money within two months at most. Things are hard: the car needs licensing, and the authorities have imposed heavy fines on me amounting to EGP 20,000 in a single year (about USD 423), and the strange thing is that they recorded some violations in places I have never been to and that were not on my route.”<\/p>\n

Resentment is widespread among car owners in Egypt because of the proliferation of road surveillance cameras that record traffic violations in a way that seems random, according to a number of citizens Zawia3 spoke with. The car owners we contacted say that the spread of surveillance cameras, instead of improving safety, has led to traffic fines multiplying under the new traffic law, whose latest amendments roughly doubled the fines, earning it the nickname “the levy law” among people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under Law No. 17<\/a> of 2024, amending some provisions of the Traffic Law issued by Law No. 66 of 1973, fines were increased for a number of violations, most notably failing to renew a licence for thirty days. In 2021, the House of Representatives<\/a> approved amending some articles of Law No. 66 regarding fines for traffic violations: if a driver deliberately drives the wrong way, the maximum penalty becomes EGP 3,000 (about USD 63.4) and the minimum EGP 1,000 (about USD 21), and it can extend to imprisonment. For driving without a driving licence, the fine ranges between EGP 1,000 and EGP 2,000 (about USD 21-42.2).<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Complaints on Social Media<\/h3>\n

“We are not the only ones suffering from these levies; if you follow what social media users are saying, you will find many similar complaints.” This was Khalil’s reply to his friend Mohamed, as he explained to Zawia3. He gave him the money he needed, especially as the payment had become final after the prosecution rejected the appeal against the recorded violations, and the amount even grew with the appeal fees.<\/p>\n

Citizens frequently use social media to complain about traffic fines imposed on them by cameras, and complaints recur about fines recorded in places the car owner never visited and never went to at all.<\/p>\n

According to a post by Ahmed El-Beisa<\/a>, an Egyptian citizen from Mit Ghamr district in Dakahlia Governorate in the Nile Delta, on his personal Facebook page, while renewing his licence he discovered two violations imposed on him unjustly, as he described it: the first was for obstructing traffic in Minya Governorate, which he has never visited in his life, and at the time of the violation he was outside the country; the second was for not wearing a seatbelt, while the photo attached to the fine showed him actually wearing the seatbelt, according to his account.<\/p>\n

Multiple complaints have also emerged of fines being recorded against numbers different from the car number shown in the violation photo, as happened to citizen Mohamed Eid El-Shaarawy, according to what he wrote on his personal Facebook page<\/a> on 17 April. He says it makes no sense for a traffic violation to be issued against him while he was outside the country, and the violation photo taken by a street surveillance camera showed another person, the violation being the use of a mobile phone while driving. He adds: “The traffic department told me that I committed this violation, even though the car number in the traffic camera photo is completely different from the number on my car’s metal licence plate.”<\/p>\n

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More Violations and Higher Fines<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Under the latest version of Law No.<\/a> 17 of 2024 amending some provisions of the Traffic Law issued by Law No. 66 of 1973, approved by the Egyptian House of Representatives, the traffic fine system saw a major change in the value of fines, with the minimum basic fine doubled and a system for doubling penalties if a violation is repeated within six months. It was noticeable that there is a large gap between the minimum and maximum within a single fine, with elastic wording for fines such as “violating the instructions of a traffic officer”, a fine left to the traffic officer’s own discretion, which is used to make the car owner submit to the traffic officer, allowing him to impose the fine if the owner refuses to pay an extra-legal “tip”, or for any other reason he sees fit, according to the testimony of those Zawia3 contacted.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

According to the Traffic Law<\/a> and its new amendments, there is a set of new rules and regulations, most notably higher fines for some traffic violations and longer prison terms for some violations. Under the law, fines are divided into categories as follows: first, violations (installing tinted glass, causing environmental damage, double parking), for which the fine is EGP 2,000 (about USD 42.2), while the fine ranges between EGP 1,000 and EGP 3,000 (about USD 21-63.4) for violations (driving with a revoked driving licence, devices that interfere with radar, driving without a licence).<\/p>\n

The category of fines<\/a> ranging between EGP 100 and EGP 3,000 (USD 2-63.4) applies to (exceeding the speed limit; not using metal plates; metal plate violations such as damaging plates, changing their colour or not installing them; driving without brakes; committing an indecent act offending public morals; and assaulting traffic officers), and the category between EGP 100 and EGP 500 (USD 2-10.5) to violations (not following traffic officers’ instructions, not having a fire extinguisher, failing to attend to the injured on the road, deliberately stopping on bridges, driving very slowly on bridges, not following the vehicle’s designated lane, stopping in prohibited areas, and using a hand-held mobile phone while driving). Fines of EGP 5,000 (about USD 105.7) apply to driving the wrong way, fines reach EGP 50,000 (about USD 1,000) for transporting goods or items whose circulation or transport is banned, and the fine for driving under the influence of drugs is between EGP 5,000 and EGP 10,000 (about USD 105.7-211.4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to our monitoring, the Egyptian security services have been keen to subject the Egyptian street to tight surveillance by deploying a large number of cameras in the streets, and according to<\/a> the latest statistics by the Center for Security and Strategic Research and Studies in August 2023, backed by other figures from the data company Comparitech (one of the world’s largest statistics and cybersecurity companies), Egypt has about 500,000 surveillance cameras for traffic, homes, companies, agencies and government ministries.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

According to these statistics, Cairo Governorate alone has about 50,000 surveillance cameras. Cairo ranked 67th globally among 150 cities for the number of surveillance cameras, with 2.18 cameras per thousand people, and the study said these cameras help the security services carry out their plans inside the state and are fully under the control of those services. The authorities’ interest in installing surveillance cameras in Egyptian streets dates back to 2014, when the government began increasing the number of digital surveillance cameras in the streets, and data indicate that the streets of the capital<\/a>, Cairo, were then covered with an integrated system of electronically monitored traffic lights with about 950 installed digital cameras.<\/p>\n

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The Number of Violations and Their Revenue: A Secret That Cannot Be Disclosed<\/h3>\n

At Zawia3<\/strong>, we tried to obtain an official statement on the number of traffic violations the authorities record monthly or annually, or the revenue from fines paid for those violations, but we found that these violations are not regularly announced by the Ministry of Interior<\/a>, the official website of the Egypt Traffic Portal<\/a>, or the Public Prosecution’s Traffic Prosecution services<\/a> website, which are the bodies responsible for recording them. We did find some data, such as that the traffic department at the Ministry of Interior recorded about 81,649 traffic violations in a single day in December<\/a> 2022.<\/p>\n

After searching Egyptian newspapers, we found that the newspaper<\/a> Youm7 had published security statements on violations in January 2023, with a total of about three million violations. Assuming that figure is a steady indicator, it means that violations reach 36 million a year, indicating that the annual revenue from them reaches huge figures, certainly exceeding EGP 3.6 billion even if every fine were set at only EGP 100, the lowest fine in the law.<\/p>\n

Zawia3 tried to contact the Ministry of Interior to discuss the number of traffic violations and the estimated value of fines, but officials in the traffic department refused to comment or disclose the data.<\/p>\n

In the same context, MP Maha Abdel Nasser, a member of the House of Representatives for the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, answers our questions about whether this data appears in the state budget: “Since I entered the House of Representatives, and despite discussing the state budget several times, the official revenue from traffic violations in Egypt has never been presented to us, as if it were a national secret.”<\/p>\n

Abdel Nasser adds that the problem stems from the fact that no detailed budget for the Ministry of Interior is submitted to the House of Representatives, commenting: “Of course this is disastrous, especially as the figures are expected to be very large, and even we, as the people’s representatives, do not know exactly where this money goes,” asking: “Does all this revenue go into the state budget, or is it spent within the Ministry of Interior?”<\/p>\n

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A Law Drafted with a Philosophy of Tyranny and Levies<\/h3>\n

Major General Ahmed Hashem, a traffic expert, denied in earlier statements<\/a> the claims circulating on social media about baseless violations, explaining: “There may be an error in the device that sends violations to citizens.”<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Elhamy El-Merghany, an economist and vice president of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, says the crisis lies in the law itself and the philosophy behind its drafting, adding: “Of course everyone notices the traffic chaos in every street in Egypt, which places a heavy burden on citizens, but when drafting a law aimed at tackling this crisis, there should be a societal dialogue about the law, its goals and its philosophy, and this is entirely absent from most Egyptian legislation. So it is not surprising that the traffic law is unfair and does not achieve the basic goals of such laws as in other countries; its aim has become collecting money, not confronting crime.”<\/p>\n

He continues to Zawia3: “Looking comprehensively at the philosophy of Egyptian legislation, including the traffic law, we find that the entire state is based on a system of levies. There is no fair tax system, and fees are entirely in the hands of the ministries and are rarely presented to legislative bodies. The biggest disaster in this system is the lack of transparency about the size and fate of the money extracted from citizens, and of course the Ministry of Interior tops the list of bodies that know no transparency in most of their work. Even the public security report it used to issue with statistics on various crimes in the country is no longer available, so will it reveal the fate of billions collected from the streets?”<\/p>\n

Returning to MP Maha Abdel Nasser and asked about parliament’s role in confronting this crisis, she answers: “The law and its final wording depend on the will of the pro-government majority, and of course Egypt’s traffic law is based solely on a philosophy of levies, in the absence of a real vision of the purpose of such laws. In principle, the aim of the law should be to reduce traffic violations and limit accidents, but in reality the law went to great lengths to detail violations and set grossly exaggerated fines for one purpose only: collecting money.”<\/p>\n

She adds: “This philosophy of the Egyptian government is not limited to the traffic law but runs through all its legislation, and there is no point repeating the talk about how laws are passed in the House of Representatives; the pro-state majority is always decisive, without the slightest attention to opposing views.”<\/p>\n

She continued: “What is striking in the application of the law and the system governing it is that the Ministry of Interior is seeking to spread cameras conspicuously in Egyptian streets, but there is a world of difference between what happens in Egypt and in Western countries. There, the camera is a means of raising awareness, preceded by many procedures and guidelines, and of course subject to a fair law, all aimed at serving citizens and reducing violations and accidents. Here, these cameras have become a national project for collecting money and levies on the Egyptian street, which explains the complaints of thousands of Egyptians about baseless and even ridiculous violations being recorded, and they have no alternative but to pay, as long as appealing costs more than the violation.”<\/p>\n

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The Well-Connected and the Secret of the Gap Between Minimum and Maximum Fines<\/h3>\n

Although there is a mechanism for complaining about a violation sent to the car owner’s phone, owners often do not complain, because the complaint fee of EGP 100 is non-refundable and in many cases equals the fine itself, and when many complaints are rejected, the cost of filing them is added to the owner’s fines balance.<\/p>\n

At Zawia3, we spoke to an officer working in the Ministry of Interior’s traffic department in a Cairo district (who preferred not to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the press and media). He says: “The real discount on fines is for those with connections; usually any car’s fines can be reduced significantly. There is a large gap between the minimum and maximum for a violation, which is exploited to reduce fines, and in many cases fines are cut to less than a quarter of the total, of course through each person’s personal connections.”<\/p>\n

According to the Traffic Law, there are ways to reduce<\/a> a traffic fine to about 50% of its value, by going to the driver’s traffic department and paying the fine within three days of receiving the violation message on one’s mobile phone, or by filing a grievance against its value, in which case the grievance is submitted through the Public Prosecution’s official website for Egyptian traffic services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Egyptian drivers face steep, seemingly arbitrary traffic fines recorded by surveillance cameras, raising questions about transparency and where the money goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":9115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[409,410],"tags":[19869,19868,19864,18835,19866,19865,19862,19863,19870,19867],"kateb":[19728],"class_list":["post-18580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics-en","category-investigations-en","tag-budget-transparency-egypt","tag-egyptian-drivers-complaints","tag-law-17-of-2024","tag-maha-abdel-nasser","tag-ministry-of-interior-traffic","tag-surveillance-cameras-egypt","tag-traffic-fines-egypt","tag-traffic-law-amendments-2024","tag-traffic-prosecution-egypt","tag-traffic-violations-revenue","kateb-moataz-abboudy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/jens-aber-YfKrHCxFJGY-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18581,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580\/revisions\/18581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18580"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=18580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}