Law to put duty on motorists to give updated contact info for tickets

The road traffic law has been revised to require motorists to ensure their contact information is up to date to prevent excuses that they did not get a ticket issued to them because it had a wrong address.

Currently, motorists have no legal duty to give information. 

Failing to give correct details will not be made an offence. 

But Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Senator Kamina Johnson Smith who piloted two amendments to the 2018 Road Traffic Act in the Senate on Friday said the change was needed to plug loopholes. 

The changes were approved. 

The new provision in Section 115 of the Act states that “for the purpose of the delivery of notices (tickets) under the Act, every owner and driver of a motor vehicle has a duty to provide to the authority, updated contact information whenever such information changes.”

Johnson Smith told the Upper House that during the bill's review, the amendment was recognised as being necessary to prevent the issue of the police being unable to contact motorists to issue them with tickets for traffic offences.

“It certainly could never be thought that we would go through these extensive amendments, even as we seek to implement a new electronic ticketing system and allow people to say quite simply that they never received their ticket because their information was not updated and that there is no duty for them to so do under the law,” she said.

“We want to avoid loopholes after this mammoth effort,” Senator Johnson Smith said.

She noted that while incorrect contact details will not be made an offence, “the duty will be there to ensure that car [and] bike owners know that your responsibility is to keep that information accurate.”

The other amendment approved by the Senate was the substitution of the word 'ticket' with 'notice'. The word 'notice' is what is used for tickets in the road traffic regulations.

The amendments were approved in the House of Representatives on July 6.

The changes come as the Senate opened debate on the regulations to operationalise the 2018 Road Traffic Act. 

- JIS News

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