Traffic fines relief bill passes in Lower House amid criticism

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed mea­sure to ease the im­pact of the strict road traf­fic fines in­tro­duced at the start of the year moved a step clos­er to im­ple­men­ta­tion yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic (Amend­ment) Bill in the Low­er House. The leg­is­la­tion comes af­ter many penal­ties were dou­bled, spark­ing wide­spread pub­lic con­cern.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MPs have strong­ly crit­i­cised the Bill, de­scrib­ing it as ab­surd, im­prac­ti­cal, and a knee-jerk re­sponse to pub­lic back­lash.

De­bate com­menced on The Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic (Amend­ment) Bill in the Low­er House.

The pri­ma­ry goal of this bill is to shift from a “fine-first” ap­proach to one that en­cour­ages com­pli­ance through warn­ings or a “grace pe­ri­od” for mi­nor me­chan­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive de­fects.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our said the leg­is­la­tion was ex­pect­ed to pro­vide re­lief to mo­torists and the court sys­tem while im­prov­ing re­la­tions be­tween law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and the mo­tor­ing pub­lic.

Fol­low­ing the dou­bling of fines which came in­to ef­fect with the pas­sage of the Fi­nance Bill, the Gov­ern­ment re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant back­lash from the pub­lic for what was seen as a clan­des­tine rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing ini­tia­tive and a be­tray­al of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ cam­paign promise to low­er the fines.

The Gov­ern­ment ar­gued that it was to com­bat ram­pant law­less­ness on the na­tion’s road­ways. But fol­low­ing the out­cry, the Gov­ern­ment sought to amend the bill.

Pi­lot­ing the bill, Za­k­our said the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion placed sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure on law en­force­ment agen­cies, mem­bers of the pub­lic and the courts, re­sult­ing in de­lays and ad­min­is­tra­tive bur­dens.

He said they al­so found that law en­force­ment of­fi­cers were in­con­sis­tent in ex­er­cis­ing dis­cre­tion.

“In the ab­sence of a struc­tured warn­ing frame­work, two dri­vers com­mit­ting the same vi­o­la­tion may face dif­fer­ent out­comes. If left un­reg­u­lat­ed, it risks un­der­min­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in law en­force­ment and may give rise to un­fair­ness or dis­crim­i­na­tion, which are in­con­sis­tent with con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples.”

Bring­ing da­ta to the House, the min­is­ter added, “We have ex­am­ined the da­ta and note that in 2024 and 2025 a to­tal of 27,554 fixed penal­ty no­tices were is­sued for the 18 spe­cif­ic traf­fic vi­o­la­tions that have been iden­ti­fied for the six fixed penal­ty warn­ings in this amend­ment. Of that to­tal, 14,887 fixed penal­ty no­tices were is­sued in 2024 and 12,667 were is­sued in 2025. In ad­di­tion, there have been 1,414 doc­u­ment­ed warn­ings is­sued dur­ing 2024 and 1,091 doc­u­ment­ed warn­ings is­sued in 2025 to mo­torists in re­spect to traf­fic vi­o­la­tions.”

The bill stip­u­lates that in­stead of re­ceiv­ing an im­me­di­ate tick­et and fine, po­lice of­fi­cers and li­cens­ing of­fi­cers are now re­quired to is­sue a for­mal warn­ing for 18 spe­cif­ic mi­nor of­fences. De­pend­ing on the of­fence, dri­vers are giv­en ei­ther three or sev­en days to fix the is­sue.

Ex­plain­ing how the new law will work, Za­k­our said, “Af­ter do­ing so, the dri­ver/own­er is re­quired to re­port to any po­lice sta­tion, any of­fice of the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty or an­oth­er lo­ca­tion as spec­i­fied in the warn­ing and to pro­duce ev­i­dence of com­pli­ance with­in the pre­scribed pe­ri­od. Up­on sat­is­fac­to­ry ver­i­fi­ca­tion, the dri­ver/own­er will be is­sued a cer­tifi­cate of com­pli­ance. That cer­tifi­cate serves as con­fir­ma­tion that the re­quire­ments of a fixed penal­ty warn­ing have been met and re­sults in a dri­ver or own­er be­ing dis­charged from any fur­ther li­a­bil­i­ty in re­spect to the vi­o­la­tion.”

How­ev­er, Za­k­our said fail­ure to fix the de­fect means the fixed penal­ty “warn­ing” be­comes a fixed penal­ty “no­tice” and the fine must be paid.

The min­is­ter said the use of warn­ings rather than im­me­di­ate fines was more like­ly to fos­ter pos­i­tive in­ter­ac­tions be­tween mo­torists and law-en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

He added that the ap­proach al­so al­lows for dis­cre­tion and le­nien­cy in cas­es where an in­frac­tion oc­curs mo­ments be­fore a dri­ver is flagged by po­lice.

Im­bert: Amend­ment a “hyp­o­crit­i­cal” re­sponse to pub­lic back­lash

But Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert said this wasn’t mer­cy by the Gov­ern­ment but rather hypocrisy.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Im­bert said this amend­ment was in di­rect re­sponse to the back­lash the Gov­ern­ment got from dou­bling the traf­fic fines.

“The back­lash was so pow­er­ful that I dare say that the ma­jor­i­ty of sup­port­ers of the UNC were out­raged about this de­cep­tion. And this is just an at­tempt to paci­fy those peo­ple who be­came so an­gry at this be­tray­al. So we need to put this bill in­to con­text. It fol­lows the dra­con­ian in­creas­es in fines, and it is now an at­tempt to soft­en the blow of those ter­ri­ble fines.”

Im­bert said in the Unit­ed King­dom, peo­ple are giv­en 14 days to rec­ti­fy their is­sues. He said the three- to sev­en-day grace pe­ri­od was ab­surd, par­tic­u­lar­ly from a law-en­force­ment per­spec­tive.

“This bill re­quires the per­son, the po­lice of­fi­cer, to re­port to the Li­cens­ing Of­fice with­in 24 hours that they have af­fixed a no­tice to the wind­screen of the er­rant dri­ver. So this po­lice of­fi­cer who is out there on du­ty, on the road, and who has found that some­body has a de­fec­tive tail light or some­thing like that, has one day to no­ti­fy the Li­cens­ing Of­fice. How is he do­ing that in one day?”

The Diego Mar­tin North-East MP added that mo­torists who dri­ve for­eign-used ve­hi­cles may not be able to source spare parts in un­der one week.

Mean­while, Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les said li­cens­ing of­fices will not be able to deal with the vol­ume of ve­hi­cles com­ing for cer­tifi­cates of com­pli­ance. He ques­tioned why there is no pro­vi­sion for an ex­ten­sion for mo­torists to be­come com­pli­ant.

“It will cause more hav­oc and wreak more pain on cit­i­zens!” Gon­za­les said.

Mo­torists will be giv­en a three-day grace pe­ri­od to cor­rect of­fences in­clud­ing the ab­sence of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion lights for li­cence plates, miss­ing “Tare” or “MGW” mark­ings on com­mer­cial ve­hi­cles, ve­hi­cles with­out a horn or si­lencer, miss­ing re­flect­ing mir­rors, and ex­ces­sive smoke or vis­i­ble vapour emis­sions. A sev­en-day grace pe­ri­od will ap­ply to de­fec­tive fit­tings, in­clud­ing cracked or dam­aged wind­screens, as well as noisy ve­hi­cles, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with faulty muf­flers or ex­ces­sive­ly loud ex­haust sys­tems.