Every day, Curaçao’s roads echo with the sound of sirens, collisions, and chaos. The police report new injuries, wrecks, and traffic jams, and yet the biggest crash of all doesn’t happen on the asphalt—it happens in government offices.
Curaçao has installed smart cameras, announced “modern traffic monitoring,” and promised innovation. But the only thing that would actually make those cameras effective—license plate liability—remains buried in political inertia.
Because of that omission, traffic cameras can’t issue fines, and reckless drivers continue unchecked unless they happen to be caught in the act. This isn’t incapacity; it’s inaction disguised as busyness.
“We’re going to fix this,” they said.
In 2023, Minister Charles Cooper confidently promised legislation to allow traffic fines based on license plates. “We’re going to fix this,” he said. Two and a half years later, there’s still no bill, no debate, and no law.
Meanwhile, dozens of cameras hang over Curaçao’s roads, fully capable of reading license plates—but legally powerless. The technology is from 2025, but the law is still from 1996. The result? Endless speeches about road safety and zero structural enforcement.
Supervisory agencies and the Council for Law Enforcement have long warned of this gap. Reports have been written, working groups assembled, steering committees formed. Even the Ministry of Justice agrees on the need. Yet the process always breaks at the same link—the step where draft laws must actually move through the political machinery.
And while bureaucracy stalls, the traffic toll keeps ticking.
“It wasn’t me driving.”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office and traffic officers have been blunt: without license plate liability, cameras are useless as legal evidence. The actual driver often can’t be identified, and the vehicle owner can simply say, “It wasn’t me.”
Elsewhere in the world, this problem was solved years ago. But Curaçao has spent a decade debating the obvious while traffic conditions worsen. How many more victims are needed before policymakers admit that inaction is also a choice?
The statistics are relentless: thousands of crashes every year, with red-light violations leading the pack. Just this week, more injuries from running red lights. The headlines repeat; the politics stand still. Meanwhile, society pays—in damaged cars, hospital beds, and funeral notices.
Real leadership means doing the simple things right.
True political leadership isn’t always about grand reforms—it’s often about making a proven, common-sense solution law. License plate liability would finally make Curaçao’s traffic cameras useful. It would free up police resources and change driver behavior—just as it has everywhere else in the world.
This law isn’t “complex.” The text exists. The need is documented. The technology is installed. And the victims are real.
Two choices remain. The go
vernment and Parliament have exactly two choices:
Stop talking about road safety, or
Submit and pass the law this legislative term—swiftly, decisively, and responsibly—so that the cameras can do the job they were designed to do.
Anything less is political theater disguised as safety.
Until then, every red light on Curaçao is not just a traffic warning—it’s a political one. And it’s not the lights that fail.
It’s the will to act.
