Tachograph penalty points not part of new Bill

THE ROAD SAFETY Authority (RSA) has failed to have penalty points introduced for a number of haulage-related road traffic offences in new road traffic legislation.

Despite requesting that points be incurred by bus and truck drivers who break tachograph rules – which limit the number of hours a driver spends at the wheel – the Road Traffic Bill 2009, published at the end of last month, makes no provision for this.

The RSA said using penalty points, rather than mandatory court prosecution, offered a number of advantages including the opportunity for graduated penalties depending on the severity of the offence and reducing demands on court time

The European Commission has already categorised certain offences for tachographs and drivers’ hours rules as “minor, serious and very serious”.

A second benefit is it would address the absence of a system to prosecute non-Irish licensed operators, a scenario which the RSA says discriminates against Irish operators.

Under EU law there is an obligation on the State to enforce tachograph and drivers’ hours legislation without discriminating on the nationality of the driver or those with out-of-State licences.

A spokesman for the RSA said: “Ireland is one of the few countries in the EU that does not have a fixed penalty scheme for road transport-related offences.”

The Road Traffic Bill 2009 seeks to address a number of problems with the existing regime including that almost 200,000 drivers have not had penalty points imposed on their licences, mainly because they have a licence or a vehicle registered in another State.

To reduce Garda time spent in court processing penalty point offences the Bill also provides for a written statement to be entered into the court record on behalf of a garda.

The Bill also presumes that a fixed charge notice has been delivered. At present many drivers argue successfully that they never received this notice.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Transport said the reason the offences were not included in the Bill was because its focus was on intoxicated driving.