A clear success story, right?

Not if you talk to drivers and politicians.

Both camps say the regulations are too stringent. Drivers are flooding Web sites in protest and are threatening to sign a petition by the hundreds to have the law relaxed, and politicians — from Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek down to chamber deputies — say the law should be changed, if not abolished altogether.

Czech roads have long been some of the most dangerous in Europe, with 200,000 road accidents in 2005 alone, according to police. Statistics from an EU committee that analyses transportation policy show that the Czech Republic has far more traffic fatalities annually than most countries of comparable size.

Why, then, do so many have a problem with a measure that appears to be working?

Getting the point

Detractors say the law is far too strict, punishing drivers too harshly for minor offenses.

"There is an imbalance how harshly lesser offenses are punished," Paroubek told The Prague Post via e-mail. "The law should be aimed at punishing the biggest offenders and be more lenient toward those who make small mistakes."

The new traffic rules employ a point system, similar to the one that exists in Germany. Drivers who commit an offense are branded with penalty points on their record, the number depending on the seriousness of the misconduct.

Forgetting to turn on your headlights while driving in daylight, for instance, will cost you one point. Driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol will cost you seven.

A driver who accumulates 12 points automatically loses his license and must attend driving school and take a test to obtain a new one. For every year without an offense, four points are deleted from a driver's record and three years of good driving can wipe a driver's record clean.

The new law also introduces steeper fines, some as high as 50,000 Kč ($2,200) but Paroubek has asked Interior Minister František Bublan to consider softening some sanctions.

"Essentially it's a good law and I would be against entirely doing away with it, as [the Civic Democratic Party] suggests," he said, referring to a statement by ODS deputy Ivan Langer. In fact, Langer has called for an amendment but not striking down the law.

Transportation Minister Milan Šimonovský, however, said July 13 that he is pleased with how the law is working — and that he would happily consider implementing even stricter sanctions.

That horrifies Robert Vašíček, a journalist who started the online petition against the new traffic law at his site www.chcetezmenu.cz. According to Vašíček, the law does more harm than good and should be scrapped entirely.

"The most problematic thing about the new traffic law is that it brings stress onto Czech roads," said Vašíček. "And stress is a bad passenger."

Vašíček's Web site, which was launched July 8, attracted so many disgruntled drivers that two days later his server collapsed under the strain. The site received 600 hits every second.

Some 5,000 visitors continue to flock to the site daily, whose motto is "Stop the bullying of motorists."

Vašíček says people are quickly getting fed up.

The law is unfair, he says, because the fines are too steep for those earning an average income. "It means that some people will be able to afford to break rules while others will not."

Advocating an amendment to the law that would decrease the sanctions for smaller offenses, Vašíček concedes that the harsh penalties for more serious ones, such as drunk driving, make sense.

Ondřej Horázný, chairman of the association of driving schools, agrees.

"It's bad when infractions that don't threaten road safety in any way result in serious sanctions," he said. "Penalty points shouldn't be given for exceeding the speed limit by 8 kilometers per hour [5 miles per hour]."

Want to buy a license?

Some drivers are channeling their frustration in entrepreneurial ways.

Aleš Slabý started a Web site, www.bezridicaku.cz, on which he offers drivers who have been stripped of their licenses a chance to buy new ones from other countries. It's a spoof, he says, meant to show that this new law has loopholes.

But the traffic law also has its supporters.

Stephan von Pohl, a coordinator at the Prague branch of the World Carfree Network, says the point system has worked in other countries like Germany and Ireland, so chances are it could work here as well. But it's too premature to extol the law's success, he says.