Buying and selling points: now it really is

Yesterday the Council of Ministers approved a draft bill which, in addition to establishing a 40% reduction in fines if paid within the following 15 days, makes it mandatory to identify the driver at the time of the offence.

Until now the reduction was 20%, but by increasing the discount the aim is for that difference in amount to serve as an incentive for the offender to pay the fine. For a minor offence we are talking about 20 euros, since the amount is 100 euros, but for a serious one we are talking about 100, since the initial figure is 500 euros.

Having looked at the benefits (as we might call them) of this draft bill, let us move on to its damn drawbacks, which make no sense whatsoever.

Article 72.3 of Royal Legislative Decree 339/1990, of 2 March, states verbatim:

The owner or lessee of the vehicle with which an offence has been committed, duly required to do so, has the duty to truthfully identify the driver responsible for the offence.

But of course, when the points licence began, it was legal not to identify the driver, even though the amount of the fine was considerably higher, it was still cost-effective, in some cases, to pay that amount rather than lose 6 points (or more) for a single offence.

Now they want to backtrack, and this option will no longer exist. Now, if the driver is not identified, the vehicle’s driving licence will be withdrawn for one month, in addition to paying the fine, of course. Although there will be times when it will still be cost-effective to lose that month of driving and contribute to reducing traffic jams, there will be many other times when people will look for the points to be put on someone else.

In any case, and here they have been truly clever, the vehicle’s owner will be notified, but a habitual driver can be designated; in which case the penalty would be notified to that person and not to the first, as the one who is the offender or the better-informed person regarding the offender at the time of the fine.

This is where buying and selling points comes in, which will remain illegal but will be encouraged by the countless damn measures of Mr Navarro. In the end I find myself facing a satellite-based speed limitation, as was mentioned at some point, while police and state vehicles drive freely at full speed without traffic jams.