The Ju­di­cia­ry of T&T has col­lect­ed $170.9 mil­lion in fines paid by er­rant and delin­quent dri­vers who com­mit­ted traf­fic of­fences and vi­o­la­tions be­tween 2011 and 2015 on the na­tion’s roads. This star­tling fig­ure does not in­clude the 120,489 tick­ets that re­mained un­paid in the courts for this same pe­ri­od, which cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents mil­lions of dol­lars in out­stand­ing rev­enue for the State.

The amend­ments to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act of 2017, which are ex­pect­ed to be pro­claimed next month, would see the in­tro­duc­tion of new road laws and mea­sures that will see the Gov­ern­ment mash­ing the brakes on reck­less, care­less and delin­quent dri­vers. The im­ple­men­ta­tion in­cludes the use of speed spot cam­eras, penal­ties for late pay­ment of tick­ets, red light cam­eras and law en­force­ment of­fi­cers us­ing hand­held de­vices to is­sue elec­tron­ic tick­ets. In ad­di­tion, tick­ets will no longer be paid at the courts and mo­torists can have their dri­ver’s per­mits sus­pend­ed.

On Tues­day, Head of Le­gal Ser­vices at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­scribed these new mea­sures as the u-turn sys­tem of evo­lu­tion­ary en­force­ment for the 700,000-plus mo­torists who use the na­tion’s roads.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]