Proposed legislation to double the fines and points imposed for driving offences would not reduce the amount of road deaths in Bermuda, the island’s former road safety officer claimed.

Roxanne Christopher shared her opinion during a town hall meeting hosted by Jarion Richardson, the Shadow Minister of National Security, Governance and AI, at the Vasco da Gama Club.

About 12 people attended the midweek event, which addressed the proposed Road Traffic and Motor Car (Road Safety and Penalties) Amendment Act 2026.

As well as doubling the fines and demerit points imposed for driving offences, the legislation, which Mr Richardson hopes to present in the House of Assembly tomorrow, would remove the need for police to announce when they will conduct roadside sobriety checks.

Mr Richardson said that the Bill sought to “identify those who are not willing to change their behaviour and to remove them from the population, because the vast majority of drivers on Bermuda’s roads are safe drivers and they are the ones who are the victims”.

He added: “This is about protecting victims and good drivers, this is not about penalising bad, but as we all know, you need a carrot and a stick — this is the stick.”

Ms Christopher led the Bermuda Road Safety Council’s education efforts as an executive officer in the 2000s.

She joined its call recommending a tougher legislative stance against driving offenders and calling for more preventive measures to combat drink-driving.

Its achievements included advocating successfully for the adoption of demerit points on licences, which the island took up in 2007.

Ms Christopher praised Mr Richardson for drafting the legislation but said she believed it overlooked many aspects of road safety and would prove “very punitive and criminalising a small community”.

She added: “That’s not something that is going to improve road fatalities.

“That’s going to make people more stressed because now they have challenges with transportation, they have challenges with making money, they have challenges with trying to pay these fines on top of trying to live in a country [where it is] already difficult to pay rents and pay mortgages and just live a life.”

She told the meeting: “Very few countries around the world have seen reductions [in road deaths] over a 30-year-period of investment from multiple departments and agencies. Bermuda is no different.

“It hurts us because every household has been impacted by road fatalities.

“I am not diminishing it in any way but there’s so much more that needs to be done.”

Craig Cannonier, the Shadow Minister of Tourism, Transport and Culture, agreed that more work was required to address road safety in Bermuda and noted that the issue had reached a “critical point”.

He said: “We can educate people but where’s the accountability? At some point in time, we have to be accountable to one another.

“There has to be a social contract that says ‘I’m not going to go out there and do stupid because I may wreck somebody’s life’.”

Mr Richardson, who was appointed as a One Bermuda Alliance senator in February 2020 and elected MP for Paget West (Constituency 23) that year, said nothing substantive had been done to address road safety since his arrival in the legislature.

He said: “This is not something I’m doing lightly. It’s something I’m doing because it’s a crisis and something that I’m going to ask my fellow MPs and senators to back me on because it’s a crisis.

“If they don’t back me on it, that’s OK. It won’t be the first fight I’ve lost — but it will not be the last fight I fight.”

Ben Smith, the Opposition leader and Shadow Minister of Education and Sport, highlighted the OBA’s determination to address road safety on the island.

He said: “We’ve been talking and no one has been pressing the button — that’s what we’re doing.”