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The Road Traffic Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2008 will be published in the Gazette on Wednesday (February 6).
"The main objective of the bill is to provide the necessary statutory framework and provisions for introducing a package of measures to enhance road safety, " a government spokesman said today (February 4).
"The government spares no effort in enhancing road safety through traffic management, legislation, enforcement as well as education and publicity," the spokesman said.
To further combat drink driving and other inappropriate driving behaviour, legislative amendments are proposed to raise the maximum imprisonment term for the offence on causing death by dangerous driving; to introduce new penalties for drink driving offences; to empower police officers in uniform to conduct screening breath tests at random; and to impose a mandatory requirement for repeat traffic offenders and offenders of serious traffic offences to attend driving improvement courses.
"To tackle the problem of the higher accident rate involving novice private car and light goods vehicle drivers, legislative amendments are also proposed to extend the probationary driving licence scheme, currently applicable to novice motorcyclists, to novice drivers of private cars and light goods vehicles," added the spokesman.
The bill will be introduced into the Legislative Council on February 20, 2008.
Ends/Monday, February 4, 2008
Issued at HKT 16:43
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