Calculator
Impound release cost calculator
A vehicle under impound can be released by paying a daily amount, up to a ceiling. What that ceiling applies to is genuinely unresolved in the article's own wording, so this tool computes both readings side by side and does not pick one.
What happened
This matters under one reading of the ceiling and not under the other — which is exactly the question the article leaves open.
The ceiling: two readings, and the article does not choose
Reading A (additive) vs Reading B (appositive/non-additive) of "مبلغ الغرامة" in this final sentence — not settled by this corpus. Reading A: the underlying violation's own fine plus the per-day release payments together are capped at 3,000 AED (a violation whose own fine already reaches 3,000 gets zero buy-back-day headroom). Reading B: only the per-day-payment total is capped at 3,000 AED, independent of the underlying fine (up to 30 light-vehicle days / 15 heavy-vehicle days are always buyable). Each reading below states what it computes.
Reading A
Reading A — additive: "مبلغ الغرامة" names the fine for the underlying violation that triggered the impound (the annex's own fine figure for that row); "و" is additive, so that fine plus the accumulated per-day release payments together must not exceed 3,000 AED (or, as the alternative route, the training-course cost alone must not exceed 3,000 AED).
- Release payment
- AED 1,500
- Days bought back
- 15
- Days still impounded
- 0
Reading B
Reading B — appositive/non-additive: "مبلغ الغرامة" is a loose second name for the same per-day-payment total item (2) already introduces, so only that total is capped at 3,000 AED, independent of the underlying violation's own fine, which is paid separately (or, again as the alternative route, the training-course cost alone is capped).
- Release payment
- AED 1,500
- Days bought back
- 15
- Days still impounded
- 0
Source: MR 178/2017 art. 7 · 2023-05-02 — 2027-08-07
قرار وزاري بشأن قواعد وإجراءات الضبط المروري
ويشترط ألا يجاوز مبلغ الغرامة والقيمة المشار إليها في البند (2) من هذه المادة، أو قيمة الدورة التدريبية المقررة في المخالفة الواحدة عن (3000) ثلاثة آلاف درهم، وتحجز المركبة بعدد الأيام المتبقية
Detail
A different charge: leaving the vehicle uncollected
Once the impound period has legally ended and the vehicle is still not collected, a separate daily storage charge applies. It shares the same ceiling figure as the release payment above and it is not the same rule — different trigger, different place in the instrument.
| Vehicle | Per day | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Light | AED 50 | AED 3,000 |
| Heavy | AED 100 | AED 3,000 |
These two annex rows price a different rule from the release rate above — a daily storage charge that starts once the impound period has already ended — despite sharing the same ceiling. Different trigger, different place in the instrument; never one provision restated.
Source: MR 178/2017 annex rows 113–114 · 2023-05-02 — 2027-08-07
الجدول المرفق
What the law does not say
Unresolved
Heavy vehicles: some rows state no impound duration at all
Of the 14 annex rows whose impound cell names a vehicle class, 13 (rows 2, 3, 4, 19, 25, 34, 35, 36, 46, 47, 94, plus 45 and 48 — the latter two priced for heavy vehicles on fine and points but the impound cell still reads only "...للمركبة الخفيفة") state a duration for the light vehicle only, with no matched heavy-vehicle impound row anywhere in the 117-row schedule. Rows 1/5/6/7 are the closed exception and are not part of this absence: the annex states explicitly that their heavy-vehicle track is a licence suspension (one year from withdrawal), not a missing impound duration (see the schedule rows for those offences). No provision in MR 178 supplies a default heavy-vehicle impound duration: art. 6 draws no vehicle-class line, art. 7 supplies a release rate (not a default duration per offence), and art. 8 (expired registration) is open-ended and not vehicle-class-keyed.
MR 178/2017 art. 6 — no vehicle-class distinction
قرار وزاري بشأن قواعد وإجراءات الضبط المروري
Next step
UAE violation catalogue
The federal schedule, rendered from the payload row by row. Each entry carries its annex row number so you can match it against your own notice, and each figure carries the instrument and effective period it was read from.
Related violations
Dangerous driving fines
The largest single group in the schedule, and the one where the impound and black-point columns do most of the work. Every row here is shown with all three consequences together.
Licence and document fines
The rows that penalise paperwork rather than driving. Several of them carry an impound period that is open-ended rather than a fixed number of days, and those are marked as such rather than given an invented figure.
Parking fines
Parking violations in the federal schedule. Municipal and paid-parking charges are a separate system run by each emirate and are not part of this table — where a row could be confused with one, it is marked.
Notice