LAST CALLS FOR MULTIPLE SANCTIONS OF DRIVERS?

#83Last calls for multiple sanctions of drivers?

In today's article, which we bring you, we will focus on the draft Act supplementing the Act of the National Council of the Slovak Republic No. 474/2013 Coll. on Toll Collection for the Use of Specified Road Sections and on Amendments and Supplements to Certain Acts, as amended (hereinafter referred to as the "Draft Act"), which was submitted to the legislative process before National Council of the Slovak Republic.

The main aim of the amendment in question should be to reduce the harshness of the law and its negative impact on drivers and operators of vehicles with the maximum permissible gross weight set above 3,500 kg or combinations with the maximum permissible weight set above 3,500 kg. In practice, such drivers and operators were often sanctioned disproportionately severely and multiple times for breaches of toll collection obligations.

If we compare such regulation in the Slovak Republic with other countries, the harshness of the law is obviously visible and causes many problems also in the area of administrative bodies, specifically this issue affects district offices. There is a need to apply just principles of punishment. In particular, we could appeal, for example, to the principle that no penalty can be imposed without law or the principle of the inadmissibility of an analogy to the detriment of the offender, whereby the conditions of criminal and tort liability and the imposition of sanctions must not be extended under any circumstances. The question therefore arises in this area as to whether the current legislation is sufficient and well designed.

But what exactly does the draft amendment bring? In the proposed amendment, only one fine will be imposed in one proceeding for multiple administrative offences related to the same vehicle operator, which are additionally committed by the same vehicle. In the present case, we should also take into account the purpose of sanctions, which should primarily be not only repression, but also that such a sanction imposed should be of a preventive and educational nature. Thus, we can conclude that, in the case of the current legislation, sanctioning is disproportionate to the nature of the act committed. However, attention should be drawn to the fact that separate proceedings for all administrative offences committed by the same vehicle operator committed by several vehicles cannot be combined into one proceeding or decided on such administrative offences in one decision.

Finally, we would like to recall an important fact of hierarchy and consistency of the proposed proposal, which is in accordance with the Constitution of the Slovak Republic, constitutional laws and other generally binding legal regulations of the Slovak Republic, international treaties and other international documents by which we, as the Slovak Republic, are bound. By interpreting the current legal regulation of Act No. 474/2013 Coll. on toll collection for the use of specified road sections and on amendments to certain acts, as amended, administrative authorities sanction multiple times for one violation that spills over several calendar days.

Such a bill certainly pleased many drivers, and in our opinion, this legislation can be considered a step forward in the area of sanctions in the field of toll collection.