President Ruto orders instant 'painful to pay fines', cameras to tame road accidents

Speaking while receiving a report by the National Council on the Administration of Justice on road accidents in Kenya at State House, Nairobi, President Ruto maintained there is a need to introduce urgent interventions that will significantly reduce the continued loss of life and injuries from road accidents.

He said that instant fines will help reduce the number of traffic offences in the nation and also ensure that those involved are brought to book.

According to him, offenders find it easier to breach the law since the system has been crippled by bribery of officers.

“The reason why it is easy to pay a bribe rather than go to court is because it takes so long to pay a legitimate fine, so it encourages so many people to pay a bribe,” Ruto said.

“We must make it much more painful to pay the bribe and much more easy to pay the legal fine.”

President Ruto added that there needs to be an expanded deployment of CCTV and speed cameras on Kenyan roads to curb the unruly character of drivers.

He ordered Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir to ensure that the cameras are rolled out in one month.

“Why haven’t we rolled out the cameras on our roads. It is just as simple as that,” he said.

“The cameras will provide foolproof evidence about the offence. We have the law, we have the cameras. Let’s roll them out.”

He said that Kenya records more than 4,000 road fatalities annually, with 5,009 deaths reported in 2025, an increase of 261 compared to 2024.

“These accidents and their ensuing fatalities and injuries cost our economy the equivalent of 5% of our GDP, translating to an estimated loss of Ksh.450 billion annually,” he said.

The president added that some of the traffic offences need to be moved under administrative interventions to fortify legal action against offenders.

He admitted that some of the challenges faced in the move to tame traffic offences, among them weak enforcement, bribery and court attendance, will be best streamlined if the recommended interventions are met.

Speaking in the same event, Chief Justice Martha Koome proposed a coordinated adjudication linking the Judiciary, the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA), the National Police Service (NPS), the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Kenya Prisons.

President Ruto noted that road safety must be pursued through a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to fully curb the loss of more lives.

“We cannot, and we will not, accept the continued loss of Kenyan lives on our roads. The government is fully committed to ensuring that the recommendations arising from this pilot are implemented decisively and without undue delay.”