The National Road Safety Committee (NRSC) has instructed specialists from the Ministry of Public Works and Transport and traffic police to work together to research hit-and-run accidents that cause deaths and implement a system where offenders have points taken from their driver’s licence.

The committee gave the instruction on June 15 during a meeting attended by public works minister Sun Chanthol and National Police chief Neth Savoeun to establish a system that deducts points from a driver’s licence for road accident offences.

Chanthol, who is also NRSC permanent deputy chairman, said that to solve problems related to road accident offences, the ministry is planning to set up a point deduction system but needed the cooperation of police, especially traffic police who enforce road laws.

“The public works ministry enforces the law on people who commit offences, but fines are issued by police officers. What the ministry wants is to work with those officers and learn how many offences police have fined and where offences were committed,” he said.

Chanthol added that many offences had been captured on automatic detection cameras.

Neth Savoeun said that for the work to be effective both sides have to cooperate, and the ministry and police have to study past offences and learn from experience.

He also requested that specialists and information technology experts from the ministry assist in training law enforcement officers in IT focusing on smartphone data management systems and a driver’s licence point deduction mobile app, especially for law enforcement officers on the ground.

“All law enforcement officers on roads should have data systems to record offences on smartphones to collect and manage data safely and efficiently,” Savoeun said.

The programme will be launched early next year.