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The decision by the police to take the drivers guilty of more severe driving offences to court, with 120 having to face a magistrate in the last two months, rather than just allow them to escape with a smallish fine at a police station after signing admission of guilt papers was way overdue.
Most drivers these days are guilty of some traffic offences as a matter of routine and the indiscipline on the roads is creating a great many safety issues, as well as contributing to the congestion in the city as selfish drivers clog roads and intersections for what they see as saving a couple of minutes on their journeys.
More probably needs to be done.
The main advantage of a court hearing is that a magistrate, unlike the sergeant heading a police traffic enforcement team, has powers to go far beyond a fine. For a start, drivers can lose their licence. Normally this is accompanied by a ruling of how long they have to wait until they are allowed to go through the process of a learner licence and a new driving test. And that new licence will have an endorsement.
The decision to cancel licences and then force the driver to go through the whole process of passing the safety and driving tests is better than using the option of suspending a licence. At least it ensures that the driver has to at least memorise the latest Highway Code, which is updated fairly regularly, and convince a tough examiner that they know not only how to drive, but how to drive legally.
Magistrates can also impose higher fines. The police ticket system of charging “without undue care and attention” might work for very minor offences, where very often there was no intention to break a road rule.
So carpark bumps and the like can still be dealt with at that level. The road regulations even allow small fines for things like treating a red light as a give-way sign where there is no other traffic, although this crime is so rampant that something tougher may well be required.
But once we start racing through red lights without looking, jumping stop signs, failing to give way and driving on the wrong side of the road to overtake a column of cars, we are moving into deliberate decisions to breach the rules of the road, not just forgetting to pay attention and drive properly by keeping our eyes on the road and our mirrors.
There does not have to be an accident to trigger charges of negligent and reckless driving; the breach itself is enough. Magistrates are trained and experienced in setting penalties, looking at circumstances as well as at the severity of the offence. So we do not get one size fits all. In many cases the fine might be higher than the police fine, and a magistrate can impose jail terms, with the option of community service where this is appropriate.
Perhaps even more importantly court decisions result in recorded convictions. If you turn up again the prosecutor, as a matter of routine, asks for a list of previous recorded convictions and if you are a habitual breaking of road rules this affects your sentence, as you did not learn your lesson last time.
Even more directly effective might be a practice by magistrates running the traffic court to look at suspended sentences. A first offender could be given a decent fine and, where necessary, a jail sentence that could be served with community service, without a driver’s licence so they use public transport to get to wherever they have to do that service, but having a couple of months of jail suspended on condition of good behaviour hanging over them if they do anything stupid would concentrate minds wonderfully.
In fact, with modern computer systems, it should be easy to set up a system whereby even the minor breaches dealt with by the police are recorded on a data base that can be accessed when you go to court for something worse.
We have been talking for years about a point system, used successfully in most of Europe and some other countries, where these small offences add up. And when you reach the total you lose your licence and have to start all over again.
The police traffic sections have been sensible in their present programme in concentrating on safety breaches. The nonsense we saw in the few years of the last dispensation where traffic police were out to make money not tame the traffic is not being repeated, and must not be repeated.
At worst someone stopping a few centimetres over the stop line at a stop sign, for example, should be a warning, not an excuse to take in fines, and similar good sense is needed on other matters.
One major problem that is growing arises from the Government’s determination to fix our roads and upgrade our highways. This allows the impatient to speed easily. You cannot speed over potholes and rubble but the decent new surfaces and better highways will be a temptation.
Possibly what is needed is a hard look at limits, setting these correctly and then enforcing them properly. Modern radar equipment is not expensive so resources should be found. Again minor breaches can be done with admission of guilt fines, recorded of course to cramp the urges of the habitual speeders, but the worst cases need to see a magistrate.
It is a common myth among drivers that stopping at red lights at night is dangerous, since you can be attacked by thieves. At the odd intersection this has some basis, but at most it is used as an excuse by drivers to go through the light, although most, to give them their due, treat the red light as a give-way sign and are ready to stop. Many years ago this was formalised with lights set to flashing amber late at night, but perhaps some legal framework could be put in place to suit modern conditions. In any case it is easy at most lights to see a gang of thieves, or even innocent people who could be thieves, running towards you and no magistrate would convict if that resulted in a sharp and safe left turn.
Our accident rates and road-kill rates in Zimbabwe are appallingly high. Our traffic densities are rising with growing prosperity. So we all need to drive properly, safely and follow the Highway Code. This does require enforcement since even if we are a good safe driver, the other person we are sharing the road with might not be. So the police upgrade in how they deal with offenders was required and is required, along with dedicated traffic courts at the major centres since with the evidence available most of the argument is over the penalty, not the guilt, so long as the police never revert to the 2016 nonsense.
A bit of video footage, or the speed trap record, and guilt is easy to prove in any proper case. As we move into middle income status we need to start copying middle income countries that suddenly have a far worse potential traffic problem. They have tamed their cowboys, and we must do the same. This is something that goes with economic growth and prosperity.
Online Reporter