New administrative penalty regime in the Traffic and Road Safety Law

摘要

The aim of the present study is to analise the most important aspects of the recent reform of the Traffic and Road Safety Act conducted by Law 18/2009 of 23 November. This reform is presented as a sort of continuation and supplement of the Law 17/2005 of July 19, which associated the driving license with a system of points, and changes completely the procedure for imposing trade sanctions, establishing a specific one, away from the strictness of the common rules, which considers and takes in account the special characteristics of the traffic, as it already occurs in other fields as in the case for violations in administrative proceedings in tax matters. The reform also is used to include some specific changes in the definition of violations (describing in more detail some behaviours), to modify the sanctions regime (establishing an accurate determination of the amount of fines, and removing the possibility of suspension of the driving license, etc.), to determine more precisely the individuals responsible for violations, to alter the statute of limitations and to include some novelty´s in the field of the appeal system. All these aspects are analised, sometimes critically, in the following pages.