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Controversy over delay to implement tech-driven traffic regulations enforcement system
ANALYSIS | RONALD MUSOKE | A month after the government paused the Express Penalty System (EPS Auto) for review, road safety experts and activists are demanding its quicker-implementation. The road safety advocates are concerned that the EPS Auto system could easily suffer the same fate as that of previous road safety measures; the speed governors and seatbelts, which suffered similar backlash from the public.
The latest demands were made on July 18 at a web-based seminar organised by Makerere University School of Public Health. The webinar was the second on road safety after one organised on June 20.
The demands follow a statement made on July 13 by Susan Kataike, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Works and Transport saying “the review process of the Express Penalty System (EPS Auto) and the related speed regulation framework is still ongoing.”
Kataike spoke of the usual civil service bureaucracy of multi-agency meetings with key stakeholders including the Uganda Police Force, Kampala Capital City Authority, the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, and technical partners. “Several concerns are now under review,” she said and listed system related errors and gaps, speed limits, payment timelines, fees and surcharges.
“The goal of the suspension is to allow for a comprehensive review of the system, regulations, and operational gaps before reinstating implementation,” she said. “The public will be informed of the outcomes of the review process soon.”
But road safety experts and activists are demanding quicker-implementation. “We’re not just talking traffic,” said said Dr. Jimmy Osuret, a road safety and public health researcher based at the Trauma, Injury and Disability Prevention Unit (TRIAD) at Makerere University School of Public Health. “We’re talking life and death.”
Dr Osuret says, from a research perspective, the EPS is one of the strategies that directly addresses a critical public health safety issue that is related to road traffic injuries in Uganda. “At 30 km/h, a pedestrian hit by a car has a 90% chance of survival. At 60 km/h, survival drops below 30%,” he said.
Irene Namuyiga, the General Manager of Safe Way, Right Way Uganda, a non-profit that promotes road safety on Uganda’s road networks, also says the EPS Auto system is what will fix the country’s road crash crisis.
“We’re a country of over 44 million people with just about 2,000 traffic police officers. It’s impossible to have sufficient enforcement with human beings. We must support them (traffic police) with automated or with intelligent systems,” she told the webinar participants.
“The EPS Auto isn’t the enemy,” Namuyiga, a civil engineer, said, “It’s how the government has introduced it that’s problematic.”
Namuyiga wants a change in the way the EPS Auto is being debated. “The EPS isn’t just about fines; it’s about fairness. It’s about making roads safer for a mother walking her child to school or a boda rider navigating a busy junction,” she said.
The EPS Auto covers over 30 traffic offences—from seatbelt violations to reckless lane changes. Yet most of the public conversation has focused narrowly on speed. Namuyiga, a passionate road safety advocate, believes Uganda’s roads are not just inefficient—they are deadly. With over 3,500 fatalities every year, and 60% of those deaths affecting vulnerable users like pedestrians and motorcyclists, she says the urgency is real.
According to the annual Police Crime Reports, speeding is among the five major risk factors contributing to road crashes and fatalities across the country. It’s also globally known that more than 80% of all road crashes result from human error. In Uganda, four in 10 road crashes are attributed to speeding. According to the most recent Police Annual Crime Report 2024, about 25,000 road crashes were recorded and 5,144 people died in these road crashes.
But this figure which the government submitted to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN agency responsible for publishing the Global Status Report on Road Safety, might not tell the correct story of the road carnage on Uganda’s roads.
In fact, the number of people dying on Uganda’s roads could be much more than the figure collected by the Uganda Police. A nationwide study done by Makerere University School of Public Health in 2016 using data from the Uganda Police Force and health facilities noted how police record alone is not reliable as its system has many challenges including incomplete data, missing data, and lack of clear data linkages.
The study noted that reliance on Police data alone under-estimates the road injury problem in Uganda. “We estimated that 25,729 crashes occurred on Ugandan roads in 2016, involving 59,077 individual deaths,” the researchers noted.
The EPS debate
Since the government paused the Express Penalty System (EPS) Auto on June 12, there has been a wave of debate across the country. From taxi drivers to private car owners, complaints flooded social media and FM radio talk shows.
Many said the penalties were too high, others criticized the speed limits—especially the 30kph restriction in school zones and markets, and some accused the government of using the EPS Auto as a cash cow. While some Ugandans, especially the motorists, celebrated the suspension as a win for ‘drivers’ rights,’ others including road safety advocates, saw it as a step backwards for safer roads.
Protests erupted on social media after the government in February gazetted new speed limit regulations as part of the EPS Auto. The gazette limits highlighted speeds in pedestrian-heavy urban settings such as school zones, market zones, hospitals and churches/mosques. The gazette also introduced new higher penalties, ranging from Shs 200,000 to Shs 600,000 for motorists caught in breach.
When the regulations were finally enforced at the beginning of June, this year, the EPS Auto sparked outrage and confusion on the roads. Kampala city found itself gridlocked as motorist attempted to respect the new regulations.
“The sudden change to 30kph was challenging for the average Ugandan motorist,” Andrew Mwase, a Kampala-based road safety advocate told The Independent recently. “A fine of Shs 600,000 in an economy where the majority earn about Shs 300,000 per month after taxes was certainly not going to go down well with the citizens. It didn’t require rocket science for whoever made these decisions to realise a backlash,” he added.
Politicians jumped into the debate with Joel Ssenyonyi, the Leader of Opposition in Parliament, criticising the execution, the confusing and inconsistent speed limits, excessive issuance of traffic fines without clear and accessible justification, lack of awareness and training, and inadequate public sensitisation prior to the roll-out.
“Many motorists are not well-informed on how the system works, how to verify penalties or how to contest wrongful fines,” he said, adding that many Ugandans found the EPS “punitive and exploitative rather than corrective or educational.”
Ssenyonyi also flagged practical issues that may have been overlooked such as risks motorists face when they stop at traffic lights at night or drive slowly. He said slow or stationary motorists are attacked by criminals. Also, although it is common for Traffic Police to over-ride the traffic lights and signal motorists through junction at rush hours or during jam, it was not clear if the EPS Auto was designed for that.
Museveni contradicts experts
In response, the Minister of Transport, Gen. Edward Katumba Wamala insisted the EPS is not a punitive scheme. He said the system is a road safety measure being implemented mainly because of Ugandan road drivers’ indiscipline. “It’s a road safety measure for us to reduce crashes on our roads,” he said.
Katumba was also excited that the system reduces corruption on the roads as it takes away the element of negotiation which was previously happening between the traffic police officers and traffic offenders.
“You can’t negotiate with it; if the camera captures the erring vehicle, it takes the vehicle’s number plate, and it has the time when the offence was committed and place where the offence was committed. But there is also room for the offender to challenge if not satisfied with what you have been given,” he said.
But, as debate around the EPS intensified, Gen. Katumba Wamala eventually suspended the implementation of the EPS Auto on June 12 following President Yoweri Museveni’s criticism hours earlier.
Instead of focusing on the road safety issues, President Museveni said the EPS Auto was all about security. “I saw some issue about the digital number plates, and fines…That people are being fined for I don’t know what. But the issue about the number plates is not about fines, it is anti-crime,” Museveni said in a speech at parliament during the national budget reading.
“I think the confusion about the EPS could be because we didn’t have the money upfront. So, we told those people (private firm behind EPS Auto) to make the digital number plates, and we would recover the money from those who make mistakes. I think that’s where the confusion started,” he said.
What is EPS Auto all about?
The EPS Auto is part of the “Intelligent Transport Management System” (ITMS), a long-term government project being implemented by the government through a public-private partnership with a company said to be domiciled in Russia that has attracted a hostile reaction.
It uses a network of cameras and sensors to detect violations like speeding, reckless overtaking, and illegal lane changes. These are logged in real time and converted into fines, cutting out the middleman and reducing room for bribery or selective enforcement.
According to Winston Katushabe, the Commissioner for Transport Regulation and Safety in the Ministry of Works and Transport, the system is legally grounded.
“What’s new is not the law, but the automation of enforcement,” he said during the July 18 webinar before reeling off the specific section of the Traffic and Road Safety Act that provides for punishment without restitution.
“Where a police officer or traffic warden has reason to believe that a person has committed a minor offence, he or she may give the offender the prescribed notice offering an opportunity to discharge the liability through payment of a fixed penalty,” he said.
“It does not apply where, for example, there is a crash, a major crash, or where one needs a lot of evidence to convict or acquit,” he added. He said the system also offers opportunity for the motorist to choose to pay or go to court.
Lawrence Niwabiine, the Assistant Inspector General of Police, noted during the same webinar that the EPS Auto is the beginning of the broader rollout of the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System (ITMS). “Eventually, we’ll monitor number plates, traffic patterns, and even insurance violations in real-time,” he said. “The EPS is our entry point into smart enforcement.”
Niwabiine said automation is meant to support, not to replace human enforcement. “Cameras don’t check for expired licenses or drunk driving. That’s still our job. But with tech, we focus where we’re needed most.”
Ugandan roads built for speed, not safety
But Namuyiga argues the problem is deeper than enforcement considering the fact that Uganda’s roads are built for speed—not safety. “From an engineering perspective, many of our roads are not really catering to the needs of our most vulnerable people,” she said. She said a typical road in Kampala is about 10 metres wide and of that, 7 metres are allocated to vehicles and just 1.5 metres on either side allocated to pedestrians.
“It means you’ve not provided for cyclists,” she told the webinar participants. “So, already, there is a mismatch in the provision of road space based on vulnerability.” She said people with disabilities and mobility impairment require more spaces to maneuver. She said engineering has a big role in the reduction of traffic crashes and road designs prioritise vehicles over people.
“Our roads are not safe from an engineering perspective,” she said, “In order for someone who is walking or cycling to feel safe on a road, the speed must be as minimal as possible to allow them or to give them the perceived safety that they require.”
Alex Wafula who walks quite a lot in Kampala and Stanley Ofwono, a motor cycle taxi or boda boda rider agree with Namuyinga. “The roads are quite narrow and they are not properly demarcated for motorists, motorcyclist and pedestrians,” Ofwono who has plied the city roads for 13 years told The Independent.
“For some roads that have designated pedestrian walkways, we (boda boda) find ourselves encroaching on them because we get harassed by motorists off the main roads,” he said. He says roads should be wide and have lanes for motor vehicles, lanes for cyclists and Boda Bodas and pedestrian walkways.
Revenue or reform?
The controversy around EPS Aut also centres on money. Many accuse the system of prioritizing revenue over reform. Paulo Mulyansaka, an elderly truck driver who over the last 15 years has mainly worked around Kampala supplying beer to depots in the city’s suburban areas, says although he is not too much affected by the EPS Auto system, he feels sorry for his counterparts who ply long distances and deal with so many issues on Uganda’s roads. “Enforcing the 30KPH regulation when most of the roads have no road traffic signs is unfair,” he told The Independent, adding that: “The EPS Auto fines were excessive.”
Robert Kisakye, a legal and policy analyst at the Ministry of Works and Transport, disagrees. “We lose 5% of our GDP annually to road crashes. The EPS is about saving lives and not money,” he said during the webinar that ran on July 18.
The road ahead
As the government reconsiders how to roll out EPS Auto, one thing is clear: the current approach to traffic safety is not working. The system needs tweaks but not abandonment. Namuyiga says the EPS Auto implementers must show the public its advantages. For Jimmy Osuret, there is also need for conversations around organised and regulated mass transit systems like light rails and buses to reduce road congestion and traffic delays.
For Richard Fituninda, a taxi driver who has plied Uganda’s highways for the last 23 years, although the EPS had some niggles, he says its operation is better than the usual interface with the traffic police officers because it makes all motorists equal before the law.
“The EPS Auto system does not want to know if you are a brother to the Traffic Officer or you are a Major General, no. If the camera captures you in the wrong, and you get punished, once, twice or three times, you will eventually learn,” he told The Independent on July 25.
