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The New Year is here, and with it came in­creased traf­fic tick­et fines. The coun­try has been caught up in heat­ed de­bate, with a sec­tion jus­ti­fy­ing the need for in­creased fines as a de­ter­rent for var­i­ous traf­fic vi­o­la­tions, and the op­pos­ing sec­tion ar­gu­ing about the un­rea­son­able in­crease and the be­lief that this would not de­crease traf­fic in­ci­dents.

The de­mer­it points sys­tem and in­tro­duc­tion of the breathal­yser taught us in some small mea­sure that very lit­tle de­ters Trinida­di­ans from break­ing the law on the na­tion’s road­ways.

I refuse to get caught up in the ar­gu­ment about whether the in­creased fines are rea­son­able or un­rea­son­able. I can at­tempt to ar­gue that for those of us who are law- abid­ing cit­i­zens, we have noth­ing to fear. Fear should on­ly be grip­ping the hearts of those who know they vi­o­late the laws when us­ing our road­ways.