Proposition 51K2177

Projet de loi modifiant la loi du 16 mars 1968 relative à la police de la circulation routière afin de sanctionner plus sévèrement la récidive pour les délits de fuite.

General information ¶

Authors

PS | SP Annick Saudoyer
Vooruit Dylan Casaer, Philippe De Coene, Inga Verhaert

Submission date

Dec. 21, 2005

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

transport accident offence criminal law highway code road safety road traffic

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA MR FN VB

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Discussion ¶

March 8, 2007 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I would like to refer to the report, which is very well written and summarizes all the discussions. Furthermore, the Commissioners will intervene to recall their views, in particular the author of the proposals concerned.

Mr. Speaker, I also refer to the written report for these two proposals very close to the project that has just been analyzed.

Thank you for your appreciation for the services.

Registered are the gentlemen Van den Bergh and Casaer.

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. The problem of flight crimes was already discussed by colleague Vautmans. Of course, I do not affect what she said. We have had a good and constructive discussion on this in the Infrastructure Committee. This also applies to such matters.

From the figures that came to the press in recent days following a written question from colleague De Padt, it shows that the number of flight crimes has decreased in recent years. Nevertheless, in 2004 it was still 9,132. Regarding deaths and injuries more in particular, though fortunately it was mostly injured, there were that in 2004 859 deaths and injuries throughout the year or an average of two per day. This is not a marginal phenomenon, on the contrary.

The decrease in the numbers could lead to the question of whether it is necessary to work on punishment for flight crimes. I think yes. The decline in the figures is, on the one hand, caused by the general policy on road safety, as painted by colleague Vautmans. It is no small merit for this government to have strived to ensure that the number of dead and wounded on our roads reaches a European average through a number of measures. We are ⁇ still not among the best students of the class and there is still a long way to go. However, the general trend is playing.

Also not insignificant on the other hand is the medialization of a number of flight crimes that can work deterrently for a number of people who would consider taking their legs after an accident. Between the discussion in the committee and the discussion here today, we have yet to experience a number of flight crimes, quite spectacular too. In Wetteren, someone who went to work early in the morning, at seven o’clock, on a bicycle, was caught by a car and left to death. He also died effectively. Such incidents force us to remain vigilant to this problem.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, colleagues, on Monday next week, during the second State General Meeting on Traffic Safety, an intermediate evaluation of the policy objectives to reduce the number of road traffic casualties will be made. The traffic barometer figures show that the government has managed to reduce the number of road traffic casualties by 33%. This is an achievement we can rightly be proud of.

However, the figures also show that the decrease since mid-2006 seems to have stagnated. Additional measures will be needed to halve the number of road traffic casualties by 2010. Our proposed legislation can contribute to this.

The proposal aims at a more pedagogical approach of persons who commit flight crime in the traffic. Our goal is the following. We think it is inappropriate traffic behavior and we want to better punish that and above all avoid it to the maximum. Flight crime is not just morally repugnant. It brings with it very large costs, not only for the person, but for the whole society. Think of the relatives of victims who have been looking for years to find out how and why and who did it. The rest of their lives they are looking for the perpetrator and especially for justice.

In Belgium there is not only a lack of good figures on the scale of the phenomenon of flight crime. There is also a lack of understanding of the phenomenon. How many cases are there in our country? Is it a marginal phenomenon? No, absolutely not. The figures show that 10,000 flight crimes accidents occur in our country each year. Most likely, that figure still underestimates the actual scale of the phenomenon. Flight crime is not a marginal phenomenon.

An adapted policy is absolutely necessary, both in terms of awareness raising and in terms of detection and prosecution. Foreign studies and an investigation in the police zone of Sint-Truiden-Gingelom-Nieuwerkerken map a number of causes and circumstances of flight crime. Common aspects of flight crimes include: driving without a driving license, driving without a valid insurance and/or driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In terms of location, most flight crimes occur on roads with a maximum permitted speed of 70 km/h or less. In many studies, the weekends and night hours were mostly highlighted as peak moments for flight crime.

What motivates people to commit flight crimes? Obvious reasons include the fear of punishment as well as the fear of the heavy financial consequences caused by, among other things, the increase in the insurance premium.

Despite all these reasons, I can’t understand people who drive someone and then drive away. Our starting point was our search for a way to avoid that and for initiatives to bring people to an adapted traffic attitude. We believe that the current punishment options, such as a fine or a prison sentence, absolutely outweigh their purpose.

If there are injured falls, it is important that they are helped as soon as possible and that the necessary medical care is there quickly to prevent worse.

Even if there is only material or material damage, it is important that quick findings can be made. This is also important for further settlement. It should be possible to verify whether the drivers involved were under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It is important that at the time of the facts, quick findings can be made and it is also important that people cannot take their legs.

What we specifically aim with respect to recidive is to ensure that the penalty is doubled. This is in line with a number of provisions of the law on the police on road traffic. For example, for alcohol and drugs, in case of recurrence, a double penalty is already possible.

Compared to other countries, we also see that this is all going in the same line. It is already bad enough in itself when such a fact happens once, but whoever repeats has a high level of traffic hooliganism and traffic terrorism.

I think that one should be able to punish more severely the traffickers, the people who do not attach themselves to the rules, the people who think they can do everything because they have a car or a motorcycle, the people who make mistakes over and over again. This is in line with what the General States will discuss next Monday. That is the purpose of this bill. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the Infrastructure Committee for the fact that this bill was able to rely on a broad consensus and was constructed in a constructive way.

I would like to leave it here and thank you for your attention.

In order to reduce the number of flight crimes, a mentality change must be sought. We must dare to see that an accident can happen, but that, when a driver drives someone, it is his damn duty to provide the victim with first aid, to notify the emergency services and to assist the victim when it suffers a lot of pain.

Therefore, we are very pleased that both our bill and Mr Van den Bergh’s bill will be voted here today, during the plenary session. Anyone who commits a flight crime after an accident with wounded people will no longer simply be allowed to go on the street again. He will have to have examinations and tests performed and therapy imposed.

I hope that with the bill we will take the first steps to avoid the aforementioned, rejectional behavior in our society. The Open VLD believes that people should always take responsibility, even when it is difficult to admit their mistake. I hope that people will realize that providing first aid to victims is a human duty in the open society, for which the Open VLD stands.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to respond first to two elements from the previous presentations.

It was referred to the good cooperation in the committee. It has actually been there. However, it had a lot of feet in the earth before we could move on to the discussion. You can see that the three bills deal with the same topic. I still regret that we could not come up with a proposal, but that may have been due to certain sensitivities.

The second is to reduce the number of deaths in traffic. We cannot avoid it and it is of course positive that we have seen a serious decrease in the number of fatal traffic accidents in recent years. This is extremely positive. To say that we belong to the EU average, I find it very far-reaching. If we look at the 2005 figures – ultimately the latest full numbers – we can find that if we look at the European Union of 15 Member States – to have a comparison point with the beginning of the target in 2000 – we leave only two countries behind us, Portugal and Greece, while that in 2000 there were four more. So we are still far from the European average and we will need to make a lot of effort in the coming years to reach that European average.

Let me now come to the present legislative proposals. I am really glad that at the end of the legislature we can finally come to some of the many still pending proposals, parliamentary initiatives on traffic, which can now finally come to their right. Just think of the new rule recently introduced regarding the priority of the right. In the end, this was not sent to the world as a parliamentary initiative, but it was created here in any case.

So now there are the legislative proposals regarding the flight crime. We have two texts approved by the committee that are ⁇ a big step forward in addressing the repeated flight crime. In this intervention, I will emphasize in particular the contribution we have made to this, in particular the introduction of traffic therapy. This is a new approach that is now included in the traffic law. It is a step whose significance we should not underestimate. It is a new building block for a traffic policy that aims to address the problem of recurring traffic accidents.

After all, it is precisely that approach of the recidive that should become one of the focal points of road safety policy in the coming years. Collega Casaer has already referred to it, since year after day there is a group in the traffic of a few percent stubborn recidivists that ruin the atmosphere on the roads for many. It even seems – that is a feeling – that this group is still growing, despite the numbers given to colleague De Padt. In fact, no one can say how many traffic recidivists ride around in our traffic. After all, there is still no good database on traffic offences, traffic fines and penalties imposed. The recidivists known, from the figures given, are probably only the tip of the iceberg.

In this case, we must then make a distinction, because one recidivist is not the other. In that group of a few percent, but with an impact that is much greater on road safety, there is at the court in any case a limited number of drivers known to whom the term "breaker" applies, a word that is ⁇ not exaggerated. On that group of motorists, the existing arsenal of penalties has little or only very temporary impact. They do not hesitate to drive under influence, then drive around with a revoked driver’s license, to commit flight crimes, to drive without insurance, to strike the rules on the inspection of vehicles, to ignore traffic lights, and so on.

Moreover, I get more and more signals that driving without a driving license is starting to become a big problem. A lot of driving licenses are being withdrawn. The decrease to the right of sending is regularly pronounced, but a lot of those punished appear to be that prohibition to scratch their lips. According to information from the police services, it appears to be a growing problem that urgently needs more attention.

The problem of recidivism in traffic – I am not only talking about flight crime – has not been removed in recent years from the discussions in the Chamber Committee for Infrastructure. CD&V has repeatedly stressed this. Think only of the discussions on the amendment of the law-Durant on road safety, the traffic law. The same theme was already an important theme at the first State-General of road safety in 2002. There is a reference here afterwards to the General States of Monday coming, but it is also good to look at what was agreed in 2002. At that time, recidivism and its approach were already pushed forward as a major problem. Recently, this has been discussed extensively in the hearings in the Chamber Committee for the evaluation of the first States-General.

There is always a complaint about the lack of a good database. Anno 2007 we must unfortunately note that creating such an automated database has apparently not been a priority for the government. Mr. Minister, we really count on the fact that an automated database of traffic offenders will be one of the key recommendations at the State-General of Road Safety of next Monday. Even more, we hope that it will become one of your successor’s priorities, if you ⁇ ’t be.

Let us now return to the problem of flight crime. It is clear that flight crime is an unacceptable offence that requires severe penalties. It has already been said here. When there is a recurrence, it requires double severe punishments. There are many possibilities for the judges to impose strict penalties and the present bill makes the punishment for the repetition of flight crimes even stricter.

We strongly supported the proposals in the committee. But it must be more than that. I have already pointed out the small group of broken-makers, stubborn broken-makers who are not deterred by fines, prison sentences, or driving bans. We are therefore pleased that the committee finally unanimously supported the CD&V proposal for traffic therapy.

After all, what should happen when even the harsh punishments no longer help? There is already a certain training initiative at the BIVV, the so-called Driver Improvement program. This can ⁇ be a contribution. Drivers who, according to their court file, show little or no sense of risk and responsibility in traffic are brought together in a psychological group training to bring them to better insights and a responsible attitude. At the BIVV, these group sessions have been organized for several years, and with success.

But even the guides of those group courses will confirm it: just such group sessions are not enough for all cases. In some persistent recidivists, the problem lies in the deeper personality structure, and then a more individual, deeper guidance is needed, namely a psychotherapeutic guidance, focused on traffic. This is what we call traffic therapy.

It is not something new, it is not something original. It is already widely used in many countries in dealing with persistent traffic offenders. Data from Germany, for example, shows that this approach also works, that there are very beneficial effects. Usually, after a classical punishment, 30% of offenders fall into repetition, while after a traffic therapy that number drops to 6%. From 30% to 6% is a significant result. It was therefore, in our opinion, high time that there was also a legal basis for road therapy in our country.

How should we put this into law now? Already today, the Traffic Act provides in Article 38 the possibility to revoke the driving ban on the basis of what is called “specific training”. On the basis of that article, certain judges already send offenders to traffic therapy in exceptional cases, for example from the BIVT, the Belgian Institute for Traffic Therapy.

But here we must point out the great difference between a collective course and a therapy. Today, the “specific training” under Article 38 is mainly completed as group training at the BIVV. Therefore, we now want to add to the term “specific training” in the law the term “individual traffic therapy”. We also agree with the opinion of the College of Attorneys-General, a opinion formulated following the three proposals on the agenda here.

Thanks to this new provision, judges will be able to judge that for a particular person the defeat on the right to drive can only be removed on the basis of a successful traffic therapy. A similar procedure is already known today with psychomedical examinations as a prerequisite for lifting a driving ban.

I would like to conclude my speech with one further observation. There is still no royal decree completing the specific training referred to in Article 38 of the Traffic Act. Despite all the attention given to it, this means in practice that the approach to the hard core of recidivists is actually still not strictly regulated.

Mr. Minister, we therefore urge you to establish a working group in the short term to prepare the actual implementation, by royal decree, of the driver improvement, of the specific training and of the traffic therapy. It would be nice if you could still put this on the rails.