LTO enforcers trained on speed enforcement

International experts on road safety conducted a training to local road and traffic enforcers in an effort to improve implementation of speed enforcement and lower fatalities and damages caused by road crashes.

Enforcers from Land Transportation Office, North Luzon Expressway (NLEX), Philippine National Police-Highway Patrol Group, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, Pasig City and Quezon City Traffic Management Offices were also trained on different speed guns in preparation for nationwide speed enforcement activities.

“Let’s not wait for more tragic crashes to happen. As law enforcers, it is our duty to focus on preventive and proactive actions to save lives on the road,” said LTO Assistant Secretary Edgar Galvante at the opening of the three-day training last Monday.

The training, organized by public interest group advocating for road safety ImagineLaw, invited experts from Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) to train local law enforcers on speed enforcement.

Sophia Monica San Luis, Executive Director of ImagineLaw, says the training aims to complement the nationwide implementation of Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) 2018-001, which provides local government units with standards and guidelines on speed limit setting, road classification and road crash data collection.

The training covered good practices on speed enforcement based on experiences of GRSP experts Robert Susanj and Mark Stables in their decades as Chief of Slovenian Traffic Police and Police Calibration Services Manager of New Zealand’s Ministry of Transport respectively.

Funded by the United Nations Road Safety Trust Fund, the training fulfilled the DoTr’s (Department of Transportation) and LTO’s responsibility to provide capacity building on speed limit enforcement, under JMC 2018-001.

“Enforcement is essential to make speed limits effective. Where countries have changed their speed limits but have taken little action to enforce them, there have been very limited benefits,” said Robert Susanj, a former Director of Slovenian Traffic Police, founding member of TISPOL: European Traffic Police Network, and now a consultant for GRSP.

Aside from lectures, the participants headed to NLEX on Tuesday for practical speed enforcement exercises.