HGP Nightly News – Some drivers in Guyana have racked up 50, even 60 traffic tickets and they are still on the road. Still speeding. Still overtaking recklessly. Still ignoring the rules that exist to keep everyone alive. And according to road safety officials, the reason is painfully simple: the fines that are supposed to stop them have become so outdated, so laughably small relative to what people earn today, that for many drivers they barely register as an inconvenience, let alone a deterrent.
That alarming reality was laid bare during the latest broadcast of Road Safety and You, where officials from across Guyana’s traffic and road safety landscape gathered to confront a problem that is no longer just a bureaucratic headache. It is a matter of life and death. Chairman of the Guyana National Road Safety Council, Earl Lambert, put the crisis in stark terms.
The standard traffic fine has sat at $7,000 for years, frozen in time while salaries have tripled. “Some people see it as a small piece,” he said, and the evidence backs him up entirely. When a fine costs less than a meal at a restaurant, it stops being a punishment and starts being a price worth paying.
The consequences of this failure are being felt on Guyana’s roads every single day. Dangerous overtaking, excessive speeding and blatant disregard for road signs have all been linked to recent fatal crashes. Lambert pointed directly to one such incident, in which a driver reportedly overtook multiple vehicles while approaching a turn, a decision that should never have been made, and one that a functioning deterrent system might have prevented.
“We need to put the blame where it is,” he said plainly. The five Cs of road safety exist for a reason. Too many drivers are choosing to ignore them, and the current fine structure gives them little reason to think twice.
Technology, at least, is beginning to catch up. Traffic officials highlighted the rollout of the Safe Road Intelligent System, a network of smart surveillance cameras installed along major highways, including the busy Sheriff-Mandela corridor, that operate around the clock. The system automatically detects violations ranging from speeding and seatbelt failures to mobile phone use and restricted lane breaches, capturing registration numbers and generating electronic tickets without any need for a traffic officer to be present.
Superintendent Maniram Jagnanan of Regional Division Three was clear about what the technology is designed to do. “The system is there to preserve life,” he said. “As long as you go over the required speed limit, you’re being issued with your ticket electronically.” The cameras reduce the opportunity for human interference and remove the luck element from enforcement, if you break the rules, the system sees it.
But technology can only go so far when the underlying penalties remain toothless. Traffic Inspector Lindon Williams of the Kitty Police Station acknowledged that the demerit point system, designed specifically to hit repeat offenders where it hurts, has been hobbled by gaps in implementation. “We have found ourselves in a bottleneck,” he admitted, confirming that amendments are being worked on to make the system tighter and harder to game.
Unlicensed drivers, who fall entirely outside the reach of the demerit system, present their own separate challenge. Minibus operators and motorcyclists continue to generate daily complaints. “The police can only do so much,” Williams said, a candid admission that enforcement alone, however sophisticated, cannot substitute for a cultural shift in how Guyanese drivers approach the road.
And that, ultimately, is the question that Superintendent Jagnanan posed and left hanging in the air. When Guyanese travel abroad, they follow the rules. They stop at red lights, they wear seatbelts, they respect speed limits.
“When we leave this country and go overseas, we respect all laws and regulations,” he said. “Why can’t we start at home?” It is a question that deserves a serious answer, because until something fundamentally changes, whether it is the fines, the culture or both, the tickets will keep piling up and the crashes will keep happening.
