In the wake of a scathing assessment from a top United Nations road safety official that labeled the Dominican Republic’s traffic system a full-blown disaster and a major public health threat, a leading local mobility advocacy organization has drawn back the curtain on the deep, systemic roots of the crisis.
Speaking from Santo Domingo, the Dominican Road Mobility Foundation (commonly known as Movido) emphasized that the chronic gridlock, rampant rule-breaking and rising fatalities plaguing the nation’s roads are not accidental. Instead, the group argued, they are the predictable outcome of years of systematic disregard for existing public road safety policies and a persistent failure to enforce current national legislation.
In a formal press statement, Movido pushed back against the patchwork, short-term measures that have defined the government’s response to the crisis for years. Road safety, the organization stressed, cannot continue to rely on sporadic, one-off enforcement operations or empty media announcements meant to appease public concern rather than solve the problem. The core issue, Movido explained, is structural stagnation stemming from consistent failures to fully enforce Law 63-17, the country’s landmark legislation governing mobility, land transportation, traffic management and road safety.
Movido outlined three key failures that have created a culture of impunity on Dominican roads. First, the controversial halting of the national automated photo-fine project, which was designed to penalize repeat speeding and rule-breaking offenders, eliminated a core tool for consistent enforcement. Second, the nation’s Vehicle Technical Inspection program, meant to remove unsafe, accident-prone vehicles from roads, has never been rolled out comprehensively across the country. Third, government agencies have consistently failed to efficiently collect fines and penalties from traffic offenders, meaning rule-breakers face no real consequences for dangerous behavior.
Beyond enforcement failures, the organization also denounced that national authorities have repeatedly caved to political and economic pressure from powerful transport industry lobbies, deliberately weakening already inadequate road control measures. In the preventive education space, Movido expressed deep regret that a plan to integrate mandatory road safety education into the national K-12 school curriculum has remained stuck in the announcement phase for more than two years, with no actual implementation to date.
Similarly, the foundation raised pointed questions about the flawed design of existing road safety awareness campaigns, noting that they consistently exclude young people living in low-income, vulnerable communities – a demographic that accounts for the largest share of traffic accident fatalities across the country.
Against this backdrop, Movido issued a formal, urgent call to action for all branches of the Dominican government: the central executive branch, the National Congress, the National Institute of Transit and Land Transportation (Intrant), and the General Directorate of Transit and Land Transportation Safety (Digesett) must work together to elevate road safety to the status of a binding national state policy, backed by consistent funding and enforcement.
“Every death on the roads is preventable,” the group emphasized in its statement. “The Dominican Republic no longer needs more diagnoses of what is wrong with our road system. We need decisive political decisions, consistent full implementation of existing laws, and tangible results that save lives.”
