Traffic fines in Lanús: what the API returns and what the data shows

Lanús is a transit and working partido in the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires: Camino General Belgrano, Hipólito Yrigoyen avenue and the bridges over the Riachuelo carry light cargo, delivery vans and buses to and from Buenos Aires City every day. Municipal fines are issued by the partido on avenues and camera-equipped traffic lights; provincial fines coexist with them on the same plates.

Context and authority

The partido adheres to the National Traffic Law 24.449 through the provincial law: fines are expressed in fixed units and lapse after two years if minor and five if serious. Municipal fines are ruled on by the partido’s misdemeanour court; those issued by the province follow their own circuit, described in the Buenos Aires article.

The municipal misdemeanour court rules on Lanús fines: speeding and red-light offences captured by cameras on the main avenues, parking in the commercial centres of Lanús Este and Oeste, and lane and manoeuvre offences at the bridge approaches. A defence is filed with the court within the period set by the notice, and the discounted voluntary payment exists until the court rules.

What the API returns for this jurisdiction

In Lanús the API queries the Lanús municipal misdemeanour court and, in the same lookup, the other integrated sources of Buenos Aires; it returns each fine with the authority that issued it:

• Authority and fine number exactly as each court publishes them.
• Date, location when reported and description of the infraction.
• Amount, status and payment conditions published by that court.
• Downloadable payment slip when one exists.
• Coverage per source and partial-result flag.

What the data shows

7% of the plate lookups in the period found at least one Lanús fine without a recorded resolution. It is a moderate share for the southern suburbs and describes those who look up, not the population: most plates looked up belong to buyers, sellers and fleets operating in the area.

What sets Lanús apart is the mix: lanes and manoeuvres, parking, red lights and speeding weigh almost the same, with no dominant category as in other partidos. The median amount band is ARS 250,000 – ARS 500,000 and the median age of open fines is 240 days.

99% of the fines offered voluntary payment at lookup time: almost all of them. For a company, that turns age into money: every month without a lookup is a discount lost.

Case study: fleets that look up plates in Lanús

The fleet cohort, 50 accounts with twenty or more plates and 2,040 plates in total, found at least one Lanús fine in 7% of its lookups, a share similar to the general public. These are delivery and service fleets that cross the partido without being based there, and the fine reaches them all the same.

For a distributor based outside the partido with daily deliveries in Lanús, a plate lookup at the close of each fortnight does two things: absorb the fines with the voluntary-payment discount and deduct them from the driver of the corresponding route, instead of discovering them when renewing each truck’s technical inspection.

How to integrate

A lookup is a POST with the plate and, optionally, the jurisdictions to include; the initial response accepts the job and the result arrives by status lookup or webhook, because official sources answer in seconds or minutes. The asynchronous APIs guide explains how to retry without duplicating work and the API page details access.

{
  "plate": "ABC123",
  "jurisdictions": [
    "AR-B-lanus"
  ]
}

For a fleet, the lookup is scheduled as a monthly batch and per event (onboarding, return, contract close); storing the per-source result next to the plate settles traceability before any dispute.

Limits and considerations

• Fines from the avenue cameras are published with delay; the fine date takes precedence over the lookup date.
• Fixed-unit amounts are converted at the value current at the source; the final amount is set by the authority at the time of payment.
• Proprietary data comes from user lookups, not from a registry: the share of fines is skewed towards suspect plates.
• A source that does not answer is reported as such, never as an absence of infractions.
• The API neither pays fines nor handles defences; it delivers information to decide.