Traffic police are on duty on Street 271 in Chamkarmon district in Phnom Penh last year. Hong Menea
The National Road Safety Committee (NRSC) will launch a nationwide pilot driving licence point deduction programme from September 1, 2022, before it is fully implemented on January 1, 2023, along with the payment of transitional fines for violations of the road traffic law using database technology.
According to a notification from the NRSC on August 9, this programme will be carried out in accordance with articles 43 and 44 of the Law on road traffic, and in compliance with an Inter-Ministerial Prakas dated April 27, 2020, on penalties for violating the road traffic law and another Inter-Ministerial Prakas dated September 14, 2021, on Procedures for Revocation and Re-scoring of driving licenses.
In order to increase the efficiency of the enforcement of the road traffic law and to reduce road accidents to the minimum, as well as to make it easier for people to pay fines and ensure transparency in transitional penalties, the NRSC will start the process of deducting driver’s licence points and imposing transitional fines for violations, under management of the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Public Works and Transport.
The new programme will be tested in trials across the country from September 1 onwards before it will be fully implemented on January 1, 2023.
The same notification continued that deduction of driver’s licence points and the transitional penalty for violations of the road traffic law will be carried out automatically through technological means to record information stored in a database system.
Therefore, all drivers should carry their licence with them to provide to the authorities who will use it to monitor and implement the deduction of points in case of violations of the law on road traffic.
According to the notice, for transitional fines for road traffic violations, payment can be made at TrueMoney counters or TrueMoney agents or through the TrueMoney Mobile App in addition to direct payments at the road traffic police departments.
The ministry implemented the pilot scheme on September 1, with the full programme set to go live on January 1 next year. The demerit point reductions will be made through a smartphone app, which will allow officers to automatically deduct scores and update the driver’s licence department and the drivers themselves.
The ministries of transport and interior issued a joint prakas saying that every clean licence will have 12 points and that offences will incur penalties from one to six points.
The prakas said that one point will be deducted from drivers who fail to wear a seatbelt or helmet, use high beam headlights on oncoming traffic, cross the centre line in a non-passing section of road or exceed the speed limit by up to 19kph. The drivers of overloaded vehicles and those without lights at night time will also be penalised one point.
It added that exceeding the speed limit by 50kph or more, driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.40mg per litre of breath or from 0.80mg per litre of blood or under the influence of drugs would incur a penalty of six points. Fleeing an accident, using fake license plates or vehicle ID cards or injuring another road user would also result in the loss of six points.
Those who repeatedly use expired or invalid drivers’ licences and those who refuse to take a drug or alcohol test would likewise be docked six points.
When a driver has lost all 12 of their points, they shall be required to re-sit their driving test, no earlier than six months after the loss. Drivers who cause accidents which result in serious injuries or deaths will be banned from driving for five years.
Kim Pagna, country director of the Asia Injury Prevention (AIP) Foundation, told The Post on August 9 that the launch of the driver’s licence point deduction programme, if properly implemented by authorities, would contribute to reducing accidents in the country because nations around the world also have used similar systems with good results.
He added that in Cambodia, this programme has been available since 2007’s Law on Road Traffic, but because the Kingdom has had some challenges related to technological systems before it has just started testing in 2022.
However, he suggested that the tests on this should be done on national roads, especially any road that has a high number of serious traffic accidents, in order to test whether the practice is effective or not.
“Before implementing it, we should have a wide-ranging education effort aimed at the people who use the roads so that they do know about it and make sure there is no clash between authorities and drivers, because if there are negative public reactions to it and we stop implementing it then we’ve failed, and this will improve safety if it is successful,” he said.
