Gail Alexan­der

Mo­torists have been warned to start fol­low­ing the rules of the road from now be­cause if they breach the law af­ter May 26, their dri­ver’s li­cens­es could end up be­ing sus­pend­ed.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi —and Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan—yes­ter­day said in the Sen­ate that Gov­ern­ment’s de­mer­it point sys­tem and fixed penal­ty sys­tem for mo­torists will now be­come law on May 26 af­ter it was de­layed in March.

Un­der the de­mer­it sys­tem, dri­vers vi­o­lat­ing road traf­fic rules could face sus­pen­sion of their dri­ving per­mits for up to two years.

Ac­cord­ing to the sys­tem, dri­vers be­gin with ze­ro points on their record and each traf­fic vi­o­la­tion adds points to the record. More than 10 points but less than 14 with­in three years leads to sus­pen­sion of the li­cense for six months. More than 14 points but less than 20 with­in three years can lead to a one-year sus­pen­sion. More than 20 de­mer­its can lead to two years’ sus­pen­sion.

The num­ber of points that can be is­sued against a dri­ver at any one time may vary from two to 14 de­pend­ing on the se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence or the num­ber of of­fences.

A soft­ware man­age­ment sys­tem - the “U-turn sys­tem—will record strikes against dri­vers via a frame­work which can be ac­cessed on the field by au­thor­i­ties.

Al-Rawi pre­sent­ed pro­posed mo­tor ve­hi­cle leg­is­la­tion re­gard­ing fur­ther ar­eas, from new ra­dio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (RFID) li­cense plates to tints. The RFID plates will mark the start of a launch of an ‘Eyes Every­where net, pos­si­bly from June,” he said.

Al-Rawi said the bill will re­form ar­eas, in­clud­ing in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and will “save lives and crush crim­i­nal­i­ty” pass­ing through trans­port routes.

It will al­so as­sist vul­ner­a­ble and dis­abled peo­ple: the bill cov­ers recog­ni­tion of white canes to sig­ni­fy vi­su­al­ly im­paired peo­ple.

It’s al­so pro­posed that dif­fer­ent­ly-abled peo­ple will have le­gal pri­or­i­ty for park­ing which they don’t cur­rent­ly en­joy. Pro­vi­sions al­so en­sure park­ing in spe­cial cir­cum­stances such as for the very aged.

On the RFID plates, Al-Rawi said crimes are com­mit­ted on the roads and peo­ple al­so use cars for get­away pur­pos­es in rob­beries.

“We want to track that us­ing RFID tags to iden­ti­fy your po­si­tion—an ‘Eyes Every­where’ con­cept,” he said.

The sys­tem in­volves a chip placed in li­cense plates. This will be done via a new reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem and in­for­ma­tion from chips will be record­ed by equip­ment as ve­hi­cles pass along roads. He not­ed that the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty and ju­di­cia­ry are con­nect­ed via tech­nol­o­gy. Oth­er claus­es har­monise po­lice and ju­di­cia­ry data­bas­es.

Mo­torists will now be re­quired to change li­cense plates and re-reg­is­ter ve­hi­cles every five years. New ve­hi­cles will fall un­der the new process and those al­ready in the sys­tem will go through re­newals in batch­es. The AG hopes elec­tron­ic reg­is­tra­tion and tag­ging could be­gin by June.

Mo­torists won’t have to go to the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty to make changes, as it can be done elec­tron­i­cal­ly, he added. How­ev­er, fail­ure to change li­cense plates will be “treat­ed with” in the law.

Mo­torists al­so wouldn’t be able to let any­one use the plate fraud­u­lent­ly. Plates will be the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty’s prop­er­ty and it will be an of­fence to have im­i­ta­tion plates. Plates can be al­so cus­tomised at a cost.

Al-Rawi said the re­cent­ly-passed Ev­i­dence amend­ment bill will now al­low use of ev­i­dence from tech­nol­o­gy.

“So wit­ness­es don’t have to step for­ward—a CCTV cam­era can cap­ture this,” he said.

Oth­er claus­es will deal with how ve­hi­cle tints are han­dled. Al-Rawi said the “ob­scen­i­ty and in­dig­ni­ty” of re­moval of tints from cars which have to park on high­ways for this—and big fines—will be gone. He said it was a ridicu­lous pro­vi­sion.

The bill al­so pro­vides for spot speed cam­eras. Al-Rawi al­so said road deaths are down 12 per cent over 2015-19.