New laws have been created and others updated aiming to make Guernsey’s roads safer with new guidelines for prosecuting potentially lethal drivers.
The ordinances that were updated and introduced during this week’s States meeting were the ‘Road Traffic (Drink Driving) (Guernsey) Law, 1989 (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025’, the ‘Road Traffic (Guernsey) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025’, and the ‘Road Traffic (Causing Death or Serious Injury by Driving) (Guernsey) Law, 2025’.
The new ‘Road Traffic (Guernsey) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025’, sees a more detailed explanation of what constitutes driving dangerously and also clarifies the meaning of driving without due care and attention, and driving without reasonable consideration for others.
Under this new law, ‘dangerous’ will refer to the “danger either of injury to any person or of serious damage to property” caused by the individual’s driving.
This new law will cover horse riders, or people riding other animals, as well as motor vehicles.
That change was approved by 36 deputies, with only deputies Steve Falla, Aidan Matthews and Victoria Oliver withholding their votes, while Deputy Andy Cameron was absent.
The States have also updated laws to clarify what constitutes ‘dangerous driving’, ‘driving without due care and attention’, ‘driving without reasonable consideration’, and ‘serious injury’.
The updated laws will allow a court to convict someone of the less severe offence of ‘careless/inconsiderate driving’ if the facts don’t fully support a ‘dangerous driving’ charge.
The States has also introduced specified legal limits for driving when having taken controlled drugs and it creates an offence of driving whilst over the prescribed limit for those drugs.
Convictions under these newly clarified laws will carry mandatory driving disqualifications, and defined maximum prison sentences.
Death by dangerous driving carries a maximum of 14 years imprisonment, whilst death by careless or inconsiderate driving will carry a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.
Causing serious injury by dangerous driving will carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison, while causing serious injury by careless or inconsiderate driving could get you two years behind bars.
The laws replaced were originally put in place in 1957, the same year the USSR launched Sputnik, Elvis Bought Graceland and Harold MacMillan became the UK’s Prime Minister, to offer some perspective on how much the world and the roads have changed in the 67 years since.
In essence, the updated and new laws will modernise and toughen up the legal framework surrounding fatal and serious injury road traffic offences in Guernsey.
These were approved by 38 deputies with only Deputy Victoria Oliver withholding her vote, and Deputy Andy Cameron absent.
The updated ‘Road Traffic (Drink Driving) (Guernsey) Law, 1989 (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025’ also sailed through, mirroring the same result.