The New Year is here, and with it came in­creased traf­fic tick­et fines. The coun­try has been caught up in heat­ed de­bate, with a sec­tion jus­ti­fy­ing the need for in­creased fines as a de­ter­rent for var­i­ous traf­fic vi­o­la­tions, and the op­pos­ing sec­tion ar­gu­ing about the un­rea­son­able in­crease and the be­lief that this would not de­crease traf­fic in­ci­dents.

The de­mer­it points sys­tem and in­tro­duc­tion of the breathal­yser taught us in some small mea­sure that very lit­tle de­ters Trinida­di­ans from break­ing the law on the na­tion’s road­ways.

I refuse to get caught up in the ar­gu­ment about whether the in­creased fines are rea­son­able or un­rea­son­able. I can at­tempt to ar­gue that for those of us who are law- abid­ing cit­i­zens, we have noth­ing to fear. Fear should on­ly be grip­ping the hearts of those who know they vi­o­late the laws when us­ing our road­ways.

Sad­ly, I can­not say that we, the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, are free from fear. My ex­pe­ri­ence as a per­son who is con­strained to dri­ve on our na­tion’s road­ways every day tells me that those blue lights or po­lice uni­forms are a sign of dread. Dread not be­cause there is any vi­o­la­tion, but be­cause our po­lice of­fi­cers are many times mis­tak­en in their as­sess­ment of a vi­o­la­tion or in the charges be­ing laid. In this re­gard, I am be­ing kind by say­ing “mis­tak­en”, as there are harsh­er terms which may be more fit­ting.

Sev­er­al months ago, I wrote about my as­so­ciate be­ing tick­et­ed for fail­ing to wear a seat­belt, a tick­et which was con­test­ed and he won.

Ear­li­er last year, while dri­ving in­to Port-of-Spain a tick­et was is­sued for us­ing a mo­bile de­vice while dri­ving. The tick­et­ing of­fi­cer crossed three lanes of traf­fic to pull our ve­hi­cle over to is­sue the tick­et. Sad­ly, as the pas­sen­ger in the ve­hi­cle, it was my phone in my hand, read­ing aloud the in­struc­tions be­ing sent by a client for the meet­ing place; the dri­ver had no de­vice. The tick­et was con­test­ed, and the hear­ing date is set for late 2026. Again, a tick­et that should not have been is­sued. In mid-No­vem­ber, a client was is­sued a tick­et, which we con­test­ed. The first hear­ing date is set for De­cem­ber 31, 2026.

My con­cern with the in­creased fines is re­al­ly twofold. The first is the in­abil­i­ty of po­lice of­fi­cers to per­form their du­ties. I say in­abil­i­ty be­cause many times with young of­fi­cers, it ap­pears to be a show of pow­er rather than an of­fi­cer per­form­ing their du­ties dili­gent­ly. The said of­fi­cers is­su­ing tick­ets al­so fail to fol­low the nec­es­sary pro­ce­dure of tak­ing notes in their pock­et and sta­tion di­aries.

More­over, the new trend in award­ing of­fi­cers for their abil­i­ty to is­sue large num­bers of tick­ets acts as a mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor to sim­ply in­crease tick­ets be­ing is­sued, rather than ac­tu­al­ly ad­her­ing to the law. Per­haps a new ap­proach should be con­sid­ered. In­stead of award­ing of­fi­cers for the num­ber of tick­ets is­sued, an analy­sis should be per­formed of the tick­ets con­test­ed and the out­comes.

The of­fi­cers who have failed to jus­ti­fy their is­su­ing of a tick­et, who have failed to keep the prop­er record and who have failed to con­vince the court to up­hold the fine should be made to at­tend spe­cial train­ing sem­i­nars or work­shops. This may work to­wards mo­ti­vat­ing of­fi­cers to work with­in the perime­ter of the law and not sim­ply is­sue tick­ets to win an award.

The oth­er press­ing con­cern is the ef­fect that this in­crease in fines will have on our ju­di­cial sys­tem. Pri­or to the in­crease, peo­ple who were is­sued tick­ets in 2025 and elect­ed to con­test them were be­ing giv­en court dates more than a year lat­er. For some peo­ple, a $1,000 fine may have been man­age­able, and de­spite be­liev­ing they were not wrong, they would have paid the fine sim­ply to avoid the has­sle of con­test­ing it.

In­creased fines may well re­sult in an un­will­ing­ness to pay and an in­creased num­ber of peo­ple con­test­ing tick­ets. Our traf­fic courts may now be­come over­whelmed with hear­ing dates for traf­fic of­fences.

Dates that are more than a year from the date of an in­ci­dent come with var­i­ous con­cerns. Tick­et­ing of­fi­cers could be trans­ferred out of the dis­trict and, as such, refuse to show up at the hear­ing. For of­fi­cers who fail to record notes in their pock­et or sta­tion di­ary, there will be no ev­i­dence record­ed of the of­fence, and the of­fi­cers them­selves will not re­mem­ber the de­tails of the charge. Giv­en this, the tick­ets con­test­ed may be dis­missed.

The in­tro­duc­tion of the de­mer­it points sys­tem and breathal­yser did not nec­es­sar­i­ly de­ter dri­vers from breach­ing var­i­ous laws. In fact, the in­tro­duc­tion of both in­creased the work­load on the ju­di­cia­ry and at­tor­neys, as more mat­ters were be­ing con­test­ed. It saw the in­tro­duc­tion of sev­er­al new pro­grammes, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple whose li­cences had been sus­pend­ed and were at­tempt­ing to have the li­cence re­in­stat­ed.

I am un­cer­tain whether in­creased fines will have the ef­fect of forc­ing good be­hav­iour. I am more con­cerned that the fines will over­whelm the al­ready over­whelmed traf­fic courts. I am al­so con­cerned about the ac­tions of po­lice of­fi­cers, who, it ap­pears, have al­ready be­gun is­su­ing tick­ets in abun­dance with­out prop­er rea­son­ing or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But time will tell how these fines work. The best ad­vice at this stage is sim­ply obey the law, and if you are one of the un­for­tu­nate few to be in­no­cent­ly tick­et­ed, the courts are at your dis­pos­al.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com