Car crackdown coming

People moan about the state of some vehicles on our roads, asking how they could escape censure by the licensing authorities.

Since  2000 a law had freed motorists from annual registration at Wrightson Road and had required just certain vehicles to be inspected privately for roadworthiness, but private testing garages have complained that motorists have not been complying. This may be about to change.

Transport Commissioner, Nathaniel Douglas, addressing the Annual Dinner of the Association of Vehicle Inspection Stations (AVIS) on Wednesday at the Valpark Chinese Restaurant has pledged action by a team of Licensing Officers. He recalled that Legal Notice 197 of 1999 as validated in 2000 required private  vehicles and motorcycles older than five years to be inspected every two years, if not owners faced a fine of $5,000. Noting apathetic compliance, he declared: “Come January 2004 a new Road Check Team will be detailed specially to confront persons driving vehicles that have not been inspected.” He listed the number of vehicles inspected over the past year, which had grown from January 4,626; February 3,145; March 27,391; April 27,025...falling to September 2,458 vehicles.  The huge leap in March and April, he attributed to the then announced threat of prosecution from the date of May 1st.

He said that 70-odd private vehicle testing stations nationwide were responsible to test 250,000 private vehicles and 5,000 motorcycles, but that if current trends continued only 50 percent of these vehicles would be examined over the two-year period. “This cannot be allowed to continue. Come January the Licensing Authority and the Police will be cracking down on delinquent persons driving uninspected vehicles.” Douglas said he agreed with AVIS proposals to broaden the scope of the business of inspection. He revealed he was preparing a policy statement for the Minister of Works and Transport and his Permanent Secretary which, if approved, would then go respectively to Cabinet, the Office of the Attorney General and Parliament. Douglas listed his proposals: “To reduce the timeframe between inspections from two years to one year, to reduce the age of vehicles that become due for inspection from five years to three years, and to include the inspection of light goods vehicles.”