Law on Traffic, Circulation of Motor Vehicles, and Road Safety

TEXT

The second final provision of Law 6/2014, of April 7, amending the articulated text of the Law on Traffic, Circulation of Motor Vehicles, and Road Safety, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 339/1990, of March 2, authorizes the Government to approve, within eighteen months from its entry into force, which generally took place on May 9, 2014, a consolidated text integrating, duly regulated, clarified, and harmonized, the articulated text of the Law on Traffic, Circulation of Motor Vehicles, and Road Safety, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 339/1990, of March 2, and the laws that have modified it, including the provisions of the amending laws that were not incorporated into it.

In accordance with the aforementioned authorization, this consolidated text has been prepared, following the criteria set out below.

First, the numerous regulations that have modified the articulated text of the Law on Traffic, Circulation of Motor Vehicles, and Road Safety have been compiled in order to assess the provisions contained in the final part of each of them, with the aim of incorporating those whose application is in force and which, due to their content, must be part of this consolidated text, which has made it necessary to reorder and renumber all of them.

Second, the vocabulary used has been updated and reviewed, including grammatical issues, while exhaustive work has been carried out to unify the use of certain terms that have been used differently throughout the text, in order to give it the necessary internal cohesion.

Furthermore, among the technical improvements, changes have been made to the way in which the articulated text is organized, some of them with dense and lengthy content resulting from the numerous modifications it has undergone. In this regard, extensive provisions have been divided into several articles, highlighting the new way in which infractions are regulated, which have become independent articles according to their severity.

It is also worth noting the new arrangement in different articles of a series of issues of special significance for citizens, such as the loss and recovery of points, as well as the loss of validity of driving permits, either due to the disappearance of the requirements for their granting or due to the loss of points credit, with the consequent obtaining of a new authorization.

Currently, these matters were regulated in a somewhat confusing manner, in excessively long provisions or even partially in annexes that made their understanding difficult, lacking the necessary coherence when regulating a subject.

Accordingly, the numbering of the articles has been adjusted, and therefore, the references and concordances between them.

Third, its content has been adapted to the recent modification of Law 30/1992, of November 26, on the Legal Regime of Public Administrations and the Common Administrative Procedure, by Law 15/2014, of September 16, on the rationalization of the Public Sector and other measures of administrative reform, which makes the BOE a single official bulletin board, making the publication in the Traffic Sanctions Bulletin Board voluntary.

Fourth, the transposition of Directive (EU) 2015/413 of the European Parliament and of the Council of March 11, 2015, facilitating the cross-border exchange of information on traffic violations in road safety matters, has been included, which was included in the second final provision of Law 35/2015, of September 22, amending the system for assessing the damages and losses caused to persons in traffic accidents, whose repeal is made because, due to its content, it should be integrated into this consolidated text.

Finally, some changes have been made, all of them considering that the capacity for innovation through this consolidated text is limited to the task of regularization, clarification, and harmonization of legal texts, in accordance with the provisions of article 82.5 of the Spanish Constitution, since the authorization to the Government is not limited to the mere formulation of a single text.

To this end, in line with constitutional jurisprudence, these changes have been limited to filling gaps, eliminating discrepancies and antinomies detected in the previous regulation, with the aim of ensuring that the consolidated text is coherent and systematic, as well as introducing additional and complementary rules necessary to clarify its meaning, within the proper limits of action and without exceeding, in any case, what would constitute a violation of the authorization of the legislator.

This regulation has been informed by the Superior Council of Traffic, Road Safety, and Sustainable Mobility, in accordance with the provisions of article 8.2.d) of the articulated text of the Law on Traffic, Circulation of Motor Vehicles, and Road Safety.

Therefore, at the proposal of the Minister of the Interior, in accordance with the State Council and following deliberation by the Council of Ministers at its meeting on October 30, 2015,