Andre Wright | Can't ketch Quaco? Really?

Taxi drivers. Don't we love to hate them. There's no more detestable a group of lowlifes (apologies to the token good ones) who cause your blood to boil, nostrils to flare, and eyebrows to furrow.

They create a middle lane that you didn't know existed. Cause you whiplash when screeching to a halt to pick up passengers. Make U-turns at stop lights. And tell you to "s*** yuh madda" with more spice than Dis-Grace Hamilton.

We all want to round them up and burn them at the stake. But, there is one thing worse than bad conduct - and that's bad law.

The passage of one aspect of the new Road Traffic Act in the House of Representatives, which endorses holding owners of motor vehicles responsible for traffic ticket-generating monsters, is incomprehensible and downright stupid. And even the baying like a banshee of the hyperventilating Cliff Hughes on talk radio - "They're terrorising us! We have to do something! Anything!" - is proof that when our brains are sufficiently deprived of oxygen, desperate society will clutch at any half-baked plan.

The State is attempting to chuck its responsibility for law enforcement and justice to mask decades of ineptitude and apathy.

Instead of prosecuting law-breaking motorists and getting them off the streets, the all-powerful State, with more than 10,000 cops at its behest, a multimillion-dollar investment in technology, and more reams of legislation than unrolled tissue in a high-school bathroom, is unjustly targeting the owners of vehicles for the breaches of drivers.

Can't catch Quaco, ketch him shut. But it isn't that the Government's chief chucker, Delroy, and Police Commissioner Antony Anderson can't catch Quaco, it's that they don't want to. They lead arms of government that are chronically infected by institutional incompetence and indolence. So, instead of issuing warrants for arrest, tens of thousands lay idle, making a mockery of the ticketing system. The highlight of this farce was reported on Tuesday, where two bus drivers were arrested after racking up 1,523 traffic tickets between them.

LAZY MOTION

Fundamentally, the State has given up on reining in rotten drivers. Instead, the lazy police commissioner and the lazy traffic chief and their lazy minions would prefer to cock up foot and punish the owners of vehicles who may or may not know of offending drivers.

And this is not just a matter of cabbies and busmen. It could affect nationwide for the conduct of its bearer or driver who drops off journalists at assignments. National Baking Company and its fleet of nearly 100 bread trucks. The ubiquitous Digicel Play minivans. The scores of JPS and NWC pickups and trucks islandwide. Heck, you, Mr Taxpayer, might have to pay for the misdeeds of the hundreds of JUTC bus drivers who might commit traffic offences and never pay for their infractions.

The State could force the hand of delinquent motorists by blocking them from renewing their driver's licence, transferring property, and profiting from a host of transactional privileges captured in its database. It could mandate that licence renewals require proof of address. And it could improve efficiency in the warrant system beyond the empty threats of Delroy Chuck about stuffing Up Park Camp with thousands of delinquent drivers.

Remember this Gleaner story from October 10, 2018: 'Ticket farce - Thousands of motorists escape sanction': "Seeming confusion between four state entities allowed drivers to ignore close to 90 per cent of the more than 65,000 traffic tickets issued by the police in the first half of this year without any consequences.

"Justice Minister Delroy Chuck disclosed yesterday that 65,195 new cases were placed before the Corporate Area Traffic Court between January and June, but said 88 per cent of those cases or 57,371 'resulted in warrants'.

"Worse yet, Chuck said during a statement in Parliament, 'Many of these warrants have not yet been issued.'"

The Senate must not allow this crap to pass.

Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.