Over the past six days, many mo­torists have sought to be­come ful­ly com­pli­ant with the re­quire­ments of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act in or­der to avoid the new traf­fic fines and fees rolled out since Jan­u­ary 1.

That the amend­ments were en­act­ed via a gazetted an­nounce­ment dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son last month, has caused cit­i­zens to re­act with mixed emo­tions as they claim that there was no pre­vi­ous pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion or ad­vi­so­ry in this re­gard. Of equal con­cern to cit­i­zens are the ad­min­is­tra­tive chal­lenges be­ing faced while they scram­ble to be­come com­pli­ant.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­cussed the prospect of re­duc­tions for some of the fines if mo­torists be­have on the roads dur­ing the first half of the year. This promise, how­ev­er, will not yield im­me­di­ate fi­nan­cial re­prieve to mo­torists cur­rent­ly af­fect­ed by the re­al­i­ties of the new leg­isla­tive changes.

Ma­te­r­i­al changes such as those an­nounced should have been pref­aced by a pe­ri­od of pre-ed­u­ca­tion for the pub­lic on the ram­i­fi­ca­tions, cou­pled with a fi­nite grace pe­ri­od to al­low for com­pli­ance be­fore full en­force­ment of the in­creas­es. This is not an op­tion which has so far been of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment.

In re­sponse to con­cerns raised by cit­i­zens as to hav­ing been tak­en by sur­prise, Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our, has stat­ed that the an­nounced changes were pre­sent­ed dur­ing his Sen­ate con­tri­bu­tion late last year. Be that as it may, there is still much pub­lic angst sur­round­ing the in­creas­es.

Since the on­set of new traf­fic mea­sures, it is now com­mon prac­tice for both po­lice and li­cens­ing of­fi­cers tasked with the en­force­ment of the stand­ing leg­is­la­tion, to “catch” er­rant mo­torists “off-guard” via na­tion­wide road­blocks, and is­sue fixed penal­ty no­tices with the new fines.

Mo­torists, apart from be­ing trau­ma­tised by the new fines, have al­so found them­selves de­layed in the grid­locked traf­fic such ex­er­cis­es cause. There has al­so been a mad rush to li­cens­ing of­fices and mo­tor ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion sites by pan­icked mo­torists seek­ing to en­sure they are com­pli­ant with the law.

Based on cur­rent pub­lic sen­ti­ment, what would have been pre­ferred was a cam­paign by the min­istry and Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion to en­sure dri­vers were ed­u­cat­ed on the im­pend­ing leg­is­la­tion; the road­way in­fra­struc­ture be bet­ter de­signed; and that the agents of the State re­spon­si­ble for en­force­ment would do so fair­ly and eq­ui­tably once the new reg­u­la­tions were launched.

For road users to be ful­ly en­rolled and guid­ed, these ma­jor changes to traf­fic penal­ties could have been clear­ly an­nounced and ex­plained, with da­ta demon­strat­ing how they are ex­pect­ed to re­duce ac­ci­dents, fa­tal­i­ties and change er­rant be­hav­iour from mo­torists. Con­sid­er­a­tion could al­so have been giv­en to fines which are pro­por­tion­ate and tar­get­ed, with the harsh­est penal­ties re­served for high-risk be­hav­iours such as ex­ces­sive speed­ing, DUI and re­peat­ed dan­ger­ous dri­ving.

In the ab­sence of this, true pub­lic buy-in may strug­gle or be de­layed, since some of the mea­sures may be viewed as ex­ces­sive­ly puni­tive, oner­ous and dis­con­nect­ed from the harsh eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties faced by av­er­age cit­i­zens.

In this re­gard, we ac­knowl­edge the call by Own­er Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Reval Chat­ter­goon for the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion to con­sid­er de­fer­ral of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­cent­ly in­creased ve­hic­u­lar-re­lat­ed fees and penal­ties, to al­low cit­i­zens to make the re­quired ad­just­ments, and fur­ther, to im­me­di­ate­ly re­vis­it and re­view some of the more dis­pro­por­tion­ate ones.