Constitutional Court refuses to annul its ruling on photomultas

The Plenary Chamber of the Constitutional Court rejected, this Wednesday, the request to annul the ruling of February 6 on photomultas, with which the high court overthrew some articles of law 1843 of 2017. Specifically, the rule that established that the owner of the car was the one who responded jointly and severally by the driver, in the event of fines imposed with the camera system.

With eight votes to one, the high court decided not to annul the sentence. The magistrate who voted in favor was Antonio José Lizarazo while Alberto Rojas and Gloria Ortiz included clarification in their votes, according to El Tiempo.

The high court argued that the declaration of nullity is an “exceptional and rigorous mechanism”, which translates that this judicial component is not made so that those who are dissatisfied with a decision of the Court use it to reopen the already exhausted debates, to the point that they question the foundations of a sentence that acquired the legal force of the thing constitutional court “.

With this, the ruling of the Constitutional Court remains firm, but with a key change in one of its articles in which it clarifies that the responsibility for traffic violations is personal and not of the owners.

This means that the subpoenas that are imposed through technological mechanisms and that have economic or more serious sanctions, can only be destined to the offender, without the owner of the vehicle being accused of any responsibility, if he was not driving. The ruling establishes that fines must be imposed on the driver, not on the vehicle’s license plate.

This decision does not cease to cause controversy, since for many the Court’s demand makes the photomulte system unfeasible, since cameras don’t have the technology to identify people that they drive and that is why it is necessary to impose the fine on the license plates of the motor vehicle.

The director of the Colombian Federation of Municipalities (Fedemunicipios), Gilberto Toro, made the request to the high court to annul the sentence, after ensuring that this system of photo fines aims to consider the shared responsibility between the owner of the car and the driver, since otherwise the system would not be able to operate, since “so far there is no technology that allows the identification of the driver at the time of taking the violation test.

He insisted that, in the world there is no “A system that allows the identification of the driver who transits in a vehicle and less if it implies the use of mandatory elements, such as helmets for the driver and his companion in the case of motorcycles, a barrier-type element that prevents identification of who drives the vehicle ”.

In addition, the Federation says that there is no facial database that allows reaching the person in charge.

According to Fedemunicipios, this limitation leaves the authorities without the possibility of technological aids in road safety, since it does not allow the owners of the vehicle to be linked to the process.

Contrary to what the Court considered, for Fedemunicipios the law of photomultas would not be violating the due process of the owners of the vehicles, because after the fine was generated and they were notified, they could participate in the sanction process and request that the fine will fall on the person responsible for the contravention.

Fedemunicipios had also asked to annul the ruling, stating that the photo-fines law sought to protect collective interests such as road safety, for which, it states, the obligation imposed on the owner of the vehicle (which appears in the Unique Traffic Register) to respond for the damage caused by his car or motorcycle, “regardless of whether or not he was the cause of the damage”, was in accordance with the Constitution.

Another institution that asked to annul this ruling was the Mayor’s Office of Medellín, which affirmed that one of the elements of vital importance for the land transit system is the formal linking of vehicle owners to the contravention procedure, when this infraction is discovered through an electronic means, because “it allows to infer that he may be the driver of the vehicle and therefore the alleged offender.”

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