Bode: The novelty in amending highway legislation - defining aggressive driving

The government approved amending and supplementing Emergency Ordinance 195/2002 on traffic on public roads and introduced new penalties for drivers violating the highway legislation, taking into account the objective included in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) expressing Romania's commitment to reducing by 25% the number of road traffic accident fatalities and serious injuries and doing so before 2026, Interior Minister Lucian Bode told a news conference on Thursday.

He unveiled ten major amendments to the highway legislation, including defining aggressive behaviour when driving on public roads and penalising it; driving on motorways and tightening penalties for rule violations; fines for violating overtaking and yielding the right of way rules; increasing the length of driving disqualification from 90 days to 120 days in case of violations of approaching or crossing level crossings; introducing a 120-day driving ban when the speed limit is exceeded by 70 km past the legal limit; making failure to keep the windshield, rear window and side windows of the vehicle clean at all times a criminal offence; changes in penalty points; banning the driving of a vehicle on Romania's public roads by foreign drivers convicted of highway traffic offences in Romania; the possibility of taking the highway code test to get driving disqualifications reduced at any service of the Highway Police in Romania; rules regarding the submission of driver's identification data by the owner of a vehicle to clearly identify the person driving at some point.

He mentioned that 90 days of the entry into force of the ordinance, the implementing regulation of Emergency Ordinance 195/2002 on traffic on public roads is amended and supplemented with the new provisions by a government decision, Agerpres.ro informs.

"This ordinance, which is subject to government entitlement to legislate while Parliament is in recess, will come into force three days of its publication in the Official Journal. One more clarification: the provisions regarding the criminal offences in the ordinance come into force 30 days of publication in the Official Journal," added the minister.

Bode mentioned that road safety is a serious problem in Romania, as it is significantly lower than the average in other European Union member states.