Chuck bemoans traffic case burden on courts

Bemoaning the high volume of traffic cases before the island’s courts, Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck is urging motorists to adhere to the rules of the road to help reduce the burden on the court system.

"One of the problems we have in the courts is that 70 per cent of the cases, outside of criminal cases...outside of civil cases, 70 per cent of the cases that come to the courts are traffic offences," Chuck disclosed.

He was speaking this morning at a justice fair put on by the Legal Aid Council in Half-Way Tree, St Andrew.

"In the courts now, you have about 70 odd thousand cases - family, criminal, civil cases. But every year you have 150,000 or 180,000 traffic cases coming to the courts in addition to those 70 odd thousand cases," he further explained. 

While noting that in plenty of these cases motorists pay their fines, he argued that this amounts to "wasting the courts time" and urged offenders to settle the debt within the prescribed 30 days.

Asserting that the government is determined to bring order on the nation's road, Chuck reiterated that the new Road Traffic Act, implemented on February 1, will be a main tool to achieve this.

"The fines are there to deter people from being indiscipline and disorderly on the road and we're going to enforce them," he said. 

"We don't want to collect any of these heavy fines. Take it from me the government would be happy not to collect any fines if the people would just behave on the road." 

- Sashana Small

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