Nothing annoys generally well-behaved drivers quite so much as having the traffic rulebook thrown at them for a minor transgression. It offends their notion of fairness and, in the process, erodes their support for the police. The police, for their part, have little option but to issue tickets. Successive governments' emphasis on lowering the road toll has dictated a low-tolerance approach. It is welcome, therefore, that a way around this unsatisfactory state of affairs may soon surface in the shape of merit points.
The concept will be studied in research about to be initiated by the Transport Agency. It will be part of an analysis of the impact of demerit points since their introduction 22 years ago. The research will ask if they have achieved better driver compliance, whether a merit-based system would be more effective, or whether the two should operate in tandem. Merit points would be gained for the time a motorist has been driving without receiving a ticket. Or they may operate as in Victoria, where tickets can be waived if a driver's good record is deemed to warrant just a warning.
The Transport Agency's director of road safety, Ernst Zollner, seems well disposed to their introduction. "It's about designing a system around the 'reasonable motorist', who is usually compliant but if they make a mistake, they are not overly punished," he says. Those reasonable drivers would not be the only beneficiaries. In terms of image and standing, the police were done no favours by the 1992 merger of front-line and road-traffic officers. Law-abiding people, who had rarely encountered them and had huge respect for their role protecting the public, suddenly had much greater contact - sometimes in a way that got their backs up.
Six years ago, Howard Broad, then the Police Commissioner, sought to differentiate the police's roles in the public mind by having road policing carried out, in large part, by officers with powers limited to that sphere. The idea went nowhere. Merit points tackle the same problem from a different angle. For the first time, the police would be allowed to fully use their discretion. Good drivers who, in fact, should never have been punished for, say, a slight breach of the speed limit would have reason to believe they were being treated fairly.
Logically, demerit points would also continue to be used. Research around the world, such as that done after the introduction of seatbelts in Italy in 2003, has generally shown they encourage drivers to adhere to the law, thereby contributing substantially to road safety. One exception was a study of speeding behaviour in the United Arab Emirates. It found demerit points had had no impact. However, the study's authors put this down to a lack of sustained and visible enforcement.
