- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 17/Jul 09:06

U-turn on demerits

INSTEAD of abolishing the 2017 demerit points regime, the government on July 10, limited it to six traffic crimes. Because the prime minister had in May promised the scrapping of the system, this might seem a welcome compromise. It’s not. Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation Eli Zakour’s move to effect these changes through a legal order during the parliamentary break, without explicit reference to any kind of empirical data and without a coherent plan for people previously charged, is worse. The framework law remains in place. But it has, by fiat, been gutted. This is a U-turn on road safety progress in all but name. Removed from the scheme are about 100 violations. Preserved are six: driving while disqualified, driving under the influence of drugs, drunk driving, failure to give a breathalyser sample, tampering of analysis samples, and careless driving. Few can disagree with this carve out. These are grave infractions. It is only fitting that for the most severe breaches drivers move towards being barred. At first glimpse, government has appeared to have refined the system, introducing a tiered order. Much like the notion of murder in the first degree, there will be conduct for which you are liable to be disqualified. Fines cover everything else. However, some offences preserved already carry possible disqualification under the governing Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act. For example, two consecutive drunk driving convictions expose a person to a three-year ban. True, in one instance there is a magisterial discretion, in another the disqualification would be pure arithmetic. But the exposure to serious consequences is, from the perspective of a driver, the same deterrence. If the mischief of the government’s move was related to the excessive number of traffic cases that have historically clogged courts and overburdened authorities, then it might be justifiable. At one point, 50 per cent of all cases in the magistracy were traffic matters. One report suggested hundreds of thousands of charges. But new ticketing has reduced proceedings. And it is the Licensing Authority that disqualifies. No data on that authority in this regard has been presented by any government official in explaining this move. To examine Cabinet’s position on this issue is to glean two worrying signals. The first is that it is willing to be regressive when it should be strict on safety culture. Taxi associations may well have the government’s ear, but the well-being of the entire country should prevail. Which leads to the second signal: only on the surface has the administration tempered itself. In truth, it has, without building a clear factual case, doubled down and sped ahead despite road safety lobbyists’ concerns. This bodes ill for governance. The post U-turn on demerits appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.