Before dealing with the question as to what damages may be claimed from the RAF, one must first establish when the Road Accident Fund (RAF) is liable to pay out damages.
According to Section 17 (1)(a) of the Road Accident Fund Act, (the Act), certain requirements are to be met before the RAF will accept or will be regarded to be liable, which are the following:
It is noteworthy that in terms of Section 17(1)(a) as indicated above, the RAF is not liable for any damage to your vehicle and as such no claim can be lodged against the RAF to repair or replace your damaged vehicle.
The following claims can be submitted to the RAF:
It should be noted that normally claims for (A)2 – (A)4 above will not be paid in monetary value to the claimant by the RAF but, the RAF will rather provide the claimant with a Section 17(5) undertaking in terms of which the RAF undertakes to settle such expenses directly with the supplier.
In order to qualify for compensation under (A)5 being general damages the injury sustained by the claimant must be qualified as a serious injury, which qualification is made using two measures, being the whole-body impairment test and the narrative test. Should your injuries fail to quality as serious, you will not be able to claim compensation for your general damages.
Some of these minor injuries include, but are not limited to the following:
Compensation in RAF matter will always be determined on a case to case basis using inter alia, the services of actuaries for calculations of loss of earnings and support claims and it is thus advisable that before you intend to lodge a claim with the RAF that you approach a RAF specialist attorney to assist you with not only the lodgement of your claim but also the calculation of your claim.
Interesting to note that according to the RAF's annual report for 2020, the average value paid out per claim was R138,010. R826,007 was the average pay-out for loss of earnings. R482,291 was the average pay-out for general damages.
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