Summary

In the autumn of 2007, the Ministry of Justice finalised the Bill to Amend the Traffic Act, Penal Code, Code of Misdemeanour Procedure, Police Act, Law of Obligations Act and Code of Enforcement Procedure, the title of which has been reduced to the Bill to Amend the Traffic Act, Penal Code and Related Acts. The bill includes provisions to introduce a new, written warning procedure, in the Code of Misdemeanour Procedure, to be used to process violations which are determined with the aid of automatic traffic control equipment.

During the approval procedure for the bill, the Riigikohus (Supreme Court) and the Estonian Bar Association questioned the justification for this procedure, and this issue was raised again in the Riigikogu(parliament). These provisions therefore merit closer analysis, including the need for such procedure, its specific elements, and the legal theoretical considerations underlying its regulation.

Whereas automatic traffic control equipment includes equipment that registers such things as failure to obey a traffic signal, parking regulations or the illegal use of public transport lanes, this article focuses on the use of automatic speed cameras as the most important category of automatic traffic control. Furthermore, the bill was drafted specifically due to plans to introduce automatic speed cameras.