An opposition MP is calling for police to carry out roadside sobriety checks without warnings and for the courts to double penalties for bad driving to cut the number of deaths and injuries.

Jarion Richardson, the Shadow Minister of National Security, said yesterday he was confident of bipartisan support for the Road Traffic and Motor Car (Road Safety and Penalties) Amendment Act 2026 when it goes before lawmakers for debate in this session.

“My goal is to get this thing over the line,” Mr Richardson, a former police officer, told The Royal Gazette. “I’m looking to break us out of our numbness and take us to a serious conversation.

“This is only going to work if everyone is agreed. The natural political arrangement in Bermuda is to oppose something someone else is saying in Parliament. This has to go beyond that.”

At nearly 30 pages, the Bill, tabled on Friday in the House of Assembly, moves to double “offence punishments, disqualification periods and demerit points where those matters operate as punishment for offending conduct”.

Equally significantly, the legislation would strike out a longstanding requirement for police roadside sobriety checkpoints, long cited as a constitutional necessity: giving advanced notice.

Mr Richardson said: “Any member of the Bar can take this before the courts. This country has been finding new and interesting ways of saying ‘no’ for too long.”

He added: “What’s so special about our constitution that it prohibits public policy from doing what police in other peer countries can do?”

Mr Richardson said he had raised the issue several times in the House during the motion to adjourn and that his exasperation with speeding, drink-driving and bad behaviour on the roads was shared on the government side.

“Especially since I got the shadow ministry, I’ve seen statistics like the digest from 2025, where there were 1,459 recorded road traffic accidents in 2024, with 788 casualties. That’s four accidents a day and more than two casualties a day.”

Mr Richardson added that between January 2023 and December 2025, there were more than 3,700 hospital emergency room visits attributable to incidents on the roads.

He said: “Run the maths and that’s more than 100 people a month going to the emergency department. Nearly 10 per cent of them were admitted. A little under half required ambulance transport. This is at a time when we’re dealing with a hospital bed shortage.”

Mr Richardson also noted that, as a former police officer familiar with issuing traffic tickets, he knew the system to be time-consuming and archaic.

“No one in the Government or the Civil Service is unaware of the problem. I decided, I’m a legislator, it’s time to legislate. Who better than someone who works in regulatory matters, who used to work in the police?”

He said the aim was to “shock the driving public who are committing these offences into changing their behaviour”.

“The reason I’m targeting this behaviour is most drivers in Bermuda are good, safe drivers. The problem we have is our safe drivers are at risk on the roads from poor decisions.

“Road traffic collisions involve the person at fault and a victim. People are being hurt by others.”

Along with doubling fines, the Bill would permit “a superintendent or higher-ranking officer to establish or authorise a road sobriety checkpoint without public notice, OfficialGazette publication or senior magistrate authorisation, but subject to written authorisation, a necessity-and-proportionality threshold, neutral vehicle selection, safe-operation requirements, record-keeping and aggregate after-the-fact reporting”.

Checkpoints have been in place in Bermuda since 2018, but Darrin Simons, the Commissioner of Police, conceded this month in an interview with the Gazette that the numbers of offenders were not being brought down.

Mr Richardson said he was hopeful the Bill would get its time for debate this Friday, when MPs return to the House.

“I’m done talking about this,” he said.