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The Gov­ern­ment has moved to dou­ble most traf­fic fines un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act, with the in­creas­es tak­ing ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

In Au­gust 2024, while in Op­po­si­tion, UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar railed against high traf­fic fines. She out­lined sev­er­al key pro­pos­als re­gard­ing the tick­et­ing and de­mer­it points sys­tem, promis­ing that if elect­ed she would re­duce traf­fic fines across the board. Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued the fines were ex­ces­sive­ly high and had be­come a tool for gov­ern­ment rev­enue col­lec­tion rather than im­prov­ing road safe­ty.

Now, a Le­gal No­tice pub­lished on Christ­mas Day amends the Ninth Sched­ule of the Act, rais­ing penal­ties across dozens of of­fences, in­clud­ing speed­ing, dan­ger­ous dri­ving-re­lat­ed breach­es, doc­u­men­ta­tion of­fences and oth­er road traf­fic vi­o­la­tions.