The government has announced that it is introducing a new drivers licence penalty points system that will see reckless drivers and habitual offenders losing their licences or having their licences suspended.
The move is aimed at ensuring safety on the country’s roads by removing dangerous drivers and those drivers who have a penchant for disregarding road rules like commuter omnibus drivers and pirate taxi drivers.
Under the penalty points system, which is similar to that used in the United Kingdom, drivers who are convicted of motoring offences accumulate penalty points that are endorsed on their drivers licence record. Points are added for driving offences by law courts or where the driver accepts a fixed penalty in lieu of prosecution, and the licence is endorsed accordingly.
Once these penalty points reach a certain level in a predetermined period, the licence will be suspended or permanently revoked.
The penalty points given to the offending drivers will depend on the offence committed, with offences such as going through a red traffic light having fewer points than the serious offence of driving while intoxicated.
In the United Kingdom, the penalty points endorsements stay on the driving licence record for between 4 and 11 years, depending on the severity of the offence It is not yet clear, how long the endorsements will be on the driver’s record in Zimbabwe.
According to Transport and Infrastructural Development secretary Engineer Thedius Chinyanga, the rollout of the new system is imminent. He revealed that the government has already acquired 10 high-tech scanners which are being used to create a digital database at the Central Vehicle Registry in preparation for the rollout.
Chinyanga told the Sunday Mail,
“Once the process of capturing is done and data integrated with other road related information/data, the law enforcement included, the system can then be piloted.”
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