UWAGI O ZAOSTRZENIU ODPOWIEDZIALNOŚCI ZA NIEKTÓRE WYKROCZENIA DROGOWE
REMARKS ON THE TIGHTENING OF LIABILITY FOR CERTAIN TRAFFIC OFFENCES

Summary/Abstract: The author discusses the nature and scope of changes introduced to the Code of Petty Offen-ces and the Code of Procedure in Petty Offences Cases by the act of December 2, 2021. Theamendment represents a far-reaching intervention by the legislator in the current legal statusregarding offences against safety and order in transportation. It foresees quite significant modi-fications in terms of the legal-criminal response to them, transformations of the characteristicsof selected types of prohibited acts, as well as propose entirely new types of prohibited acts.From the conducted analysis, it appears that the guiding thought behind the above changesis primarily to increase the degree of punitiveness of the petty offences law towards the per-petrators of traffic violations. Such a legislative approach naturally raises concerns about theinstrumental use of the petty offences law with respect to the perpetrators of these kinds ofoffences. The adopted direction of changes raises suspicions that the legislator has not thoro-ughly familiarized themselves with the matter covered by their intervention. In any case, itdoes not find grounding in the current state of traffic criminality, or in the analysis of judicialpractice. An increase in repressiveness has never directly translated into a reduction in trafficcriminality. The latter is indeed a much more complex problem, involving the necessity ofmulti-faceted references.

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