The Penalty Point System (PPS) has been made the casualty in the war of words between the competing political blocs. In a sop to motorists and public transport lobbies, both sides of the political divide have promised to rework the PPS. The question is; does it really need that much reworking to begin with?

The leader of the Alliance Lepep, Anerood Jugnauth, and Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) leader Paul Bérenger have both attempted to reach out to motorists and public transport lobbies, promising to “review”and “fine-tune” the PPS. Coming into effect in May 2013, the PPS works on a system of points that are added onto a driving licence for specific offenses and,upon reaching the 15-point limit, disqualifies the offender from driving for a period of six months. Not surprisingly, since its inception, transportation lobbies have been seeing red over the issue. What is interesting to note is that the political propaganda surrounding the issue comes just as a document has already been submitted to Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam,outlining possible changes in the PPS regime. “At this stage, we have already worked out a document and have submitted it to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO),” confirms Ben Buntipilly, adviser to the PMO on road safety matters, as well as the brains behind the PPS. “It addresses some issues in the system, introduces certain changes and will be announced by the prime minister,” he adds. But until those changes are made public, one way to look at it is to ask whether the PPS has worked or not. How has it worked, and to what extent does it actually need fixing?

As its most basic level, the PPS was designed to mitigate road fatalities. “On that score, the contribution of the PPS has been really positive,” Buntipilly tells Weekly. And on the face of it, it seems like Buntipilly does have a point. In recent years, the trend of road accident deaths was on an upswing, with 63 fatalities in the first half of 2011, 69 in the same period of 2012 and 82 in the first half of 2013. Then the PPS kicked in and in the first half of 2014, road deaths were brought down to 65. The reason we have to look at the first six months of every year is because all-year figures for 2014 are not available yet for a full-year comparison with earlier periods, but it does give an idea of the progress made in stemming the tide in road fatalities.

At the same time as death numbers were being brought down, however, critics have pointed to overall accident numbers going up arguing that while the PPS may have stemmed fatalities, it did not necessarily encourage safer road manners. But that has more to do with the influx of vehicles on the road. Just to get an idea of the increasing numbers of cars on the road, according to the National Transport Authority in 2011 there were 392,276 vehicles in Mauritius. By 2014, that number went up to 454,426. The fact that more cars means a greater likelihood of accidents is corroborated by the interesting statistic that in 2013, nearly half of all traffic fines under the PPS for traffic infractions were paid in the densely-populated Plaines Wilhelms region, specifically in Curepipe and Rose Hill. In contrast, the lowest number of fines was recorded in sparsely populated areas like Savanne and Rodrigues. But the number of cars on the road is something that’s out of the scope of the PPS regime altogether.

As the numbers suggest then, the PPS seems to be working. Not least thanks to the plethora of speed cameras to back it up. Since the introduction of the cameras themselves, the number of speeding infractions detected has gone up from 56,263 in 2012 to 66,461 in 2013, meaning that more offending motorists are being caught. Just how central the issue of speed cameras is to the PPS can be gauged from the fact that eight out of every ten penalty points and fines given out were for speeding. Using a mobile phone while driving came a distant second, accounting for seven per cent of penalty point infractions and not wearing a seatbelt accounting for six per cent. That speed cameras too are pulling their weight can be seen, but nevertheless according to Buntipilly, “the recommendations submitted also deal with the issue of speed cameras”. Most likely, the question dealt with is the question of placement of these cameras rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater by doing away with them altogether.

So if the system is working and is producing results, what is it that’s likely to change? Ever since the PPS was introduced in 2013, taxi unions and public transportation lobbies have been up in arms about it. That brings in people such as Sunil Jeenarain, secretary-general of the MauritiusBus Owners’ Cooperative Federation. According to Jeenarain, what he and members of his association have been pushing for is that the PPS be extended to deal with the unfair competition they face from illegal taxis and mini-vans picking up their passengers. “When the PPS was initially fl oated, we wanted it to include penalties for drivers operating as illegal, unlicensed taxis, but that didn’t happen and we have gone to political parties to argue our case,” says Jeenarain.

Another plank his organisation is relying on is the fact that he characterises the PPS as ‘too harsh’. “We have penalty points added and at the same time, we also have to pay fi nes; that’s a double sanction and somethingthat does need to be reviewed,” he argues.

Although Jeenarain denies that political parties have canvassed his members to come up with a proposal regarding the PPS in recent days, he does add that, “we have made our case to them and what we think the shortcomings of the system are and we have made that clear to all political parties.” If the views of lobby groups such as his, which have been at the forefront of calling for the reworking of the system are anything to go by, what they have demanded is not a total overhaul of the system, but rather a few tweaks here and there. And that’s precisely what’s likely to happen when the government fi nally decides to reveal the changes it’s planning to make to a system that for all its faults, is still working. It would be a pity if that’s drowned out by political bluster.