Judins: reinforcement of liability for road traffic offences must be justified by facts

The decision to reinforce liability for road traffic violations using law amendments should be based on facts and data, not slogans, said Saeima Legal Affairs Committee chairman Andrejs Judins.
The politician posted on Facebook after Minister of Transport Kaspars Briškens’ comments on the decision of the committee to not support the ministry’s proposal.
“The Legal Affairs Committee supports measures to promote road traffic safety and reduce the number of road traffic accidents. However, the committee believes proposals to amend specific sections of the law and reinforce liability for road traffic rule violations should be justified and based on facts and data, not general information or slogans that don’t have any ties to submitted proposals,” stresses Judins.
The committee’s chairman explains that the Legal Affairs Committee did not support the ministry’s proposal to introduce a fine for exceeding permitted road speed limit by 6 to 10 km/h.
Representatives of the ministry explained this proposal with the large number of deaths in various road traffic accidents and studies performed in 18 countries, the results of which indicate many motorists exceed permitted road traffic speed limits. The ministry’s representatives also mentioned the victims of Zolitude tragedy in their explanation, said the member of New Unity.
Judins said that authors of the legislative draft were invited to provide information as to how exceeding road traffic speed limits by 6 to 10 km/h affects road traffic safety,

and how often such violations become the cause of road traffic accidents, including accidents in which people are injured or killed.

“Authors of the proposal failed to provide this information,” said Judins.
Representatives of the Ministry of Transport that there is a large number of deaths caused by road traffic accidents in Latvia, and that high driving speed creates a very large risk for road traffic safety. Members of the committee did not deny this, but still said the provided information does not contain facts that would justify the need to adopt the ministry’s proposed amendments.
Judins said that without information from the ministry’s representatives about their own proposal, the Legal Affairs Committee asked State Police to provide statistical data regarding the number of deaths in road traffic accidents and any correlation this may have with motorists exceeding speed limits. According to information from the police, speed limit violations were found in 10% cases in 2023 and in 8% of cases in 2022.
“Continuing the discussion, we invited the ministry to compiled and analyse available information (court rulings, prosecutors’ reports on penalties, Penalty Register) about any ties other road traffic accidents could have with exceeding speed limits,” said the head of the Legal Affairs Committee.
Previously, Minister of Transport Briškens criticised the committee’s decision to not support the ministry’s proposal to impose a fine of up to EUR 10 for exceeding speed limits by 6 to 19 km/h.
Briškens mentioned on X (formerly Twitter) that the ministry’s proposal was imposing a warning as a form of punishment for exceeding road traffic speed limits by 5 km/h and a fine of up to EUR 10 for exceeding speed limit by up to 10 km/h.
“I understand there is no technology that can perfectly measure speed, and there will always be cases when someone is unjustifiably fined EUR 10. But this is another case when the state is stuck in inaction, because only a perfect solution is considered worthy of attention instead of a functional and realistic solution,” Briškens added.
He said that it’s not the size of the penalty, rather the frequency of penalties that will help change motorists’ behaviour on roads, adding that small and frequent is more annoying and, therefore, more effective a solution.
“We could said 20 lives a year if the average driving speed went down by 2 km/h. Politicians have to be able to make unpopular decisions. The truth is that high driving speed kills. Frequent and severe penalties help save lives,” stresses Briškens, saddened by the Legal Affairs Committee’s failure to see it this way.
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