SCIENCE, Energy, Telecommunications and Transport Minister Daryl Vaz says consideration is being made to remove demerit points for static offences under the new Road Traffic Act as, when accumulated, these may help speed up the suspension of a driver’s licence.

“I believe that demerit points for non-movable offences will put drivers at risk of getting enough demerit points to lose their licence within a short period of time, which obviously is not the intent [of the law], which is to keep the roads safe,” Vaz told a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House on Wednesday.

The Road Traffic Act’s stipulation of the automatic suspension of a driver’s licence after an accumulation of 10 demerit points was one of the main grouses of public passenger vehicle (PPV) operators who had staged a protest earlier this month. They told the Jamaica Observer at that time that one or two traffic tickets could cause them to lose their licence.

Under the law, which is now being reviewed by the Transport Ministry, losing 10 points could result in the licence being suspended for six months. If 14 points are lost the licence will be suspended for a year, and accumulating 20 or more points could mean a suspension of the licence for at least two years.

Vaz explained that a static offence example could be a faulty headlight, basically anything that is not caused by the vehicle moving, as opposed to moving violations which cause crashes, fatalities, and disorder on public roads.

“[Removing demerit points for static offences] is something, personally, that makes a lot of sense to me, and I will be absolutely supporting how to implement this in a seamless manner,” he said.

Currently under the law, the static offences of no park light, no rear registration plate light, no reflectors, no warning devices, and no brake light attract a fine of $5,000 and two demerit points. The non-moving offence of no headlamp stipulates a $5,000 fine and four demerit points

In the meantime, Minister Vaz said the law’s provisions relating to electronic devices are also being reviewed.

“There’s a lot of ambiguity and complaints surrounding the offence of driving and operating a vehicle while using an electronic device. The revision of the Act seeks to remove the ambiguous nature of the offence…To me, it needs to be more definitive,” he said.

Vaz said he has been subjected to this ambiguity, “in relation to having a telephone in a hands-free [mode] as against on the passenger seat, as against in my lap, and the bottom line is that it’s a discretionary situation by each individual police officer”.

Turning to another area of concern, the transport minister said a figure is being banded about that 20,000 PPV operators stand to have their licences suspended. Vaz said that, according to his research, there are 23, 243 licences that currently would be eligible for suspension, and of that amount 11,193 are PPV operators.

“This figure is reflective of persons who have PPV listed on their driver’s licence but not necessarily operators in the public transportation sector, which means it may be less. So, we’ll be looking at that also to see and break down — in relation to these 23,000 — what category they fall in — [whether] public transportation, private driver’s licence — and what are the categories of offences that are outstanding in relation to these, to see how best to treat with it,” he said.