Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli told the Finance Committee led by MK Michael Biton (Blue and White) that it is not necessary to enforce the installation of a system to prevent forgetting children in the car on Tuesday.
The law would require any car in which a child under the age of 4 is driven to install a system to prevent forgetting the child in the car. The law was supposed to come into effect in August but was delayed until March 2022. The Transportation Ministry had originally asked to delay the law for a year but was only given six months. The committee met to receive a report from Michaeli about the preparations for the enactment of the law.
Michaeli announced at the meeting that the Transportation Ministry was reconsidering the law, but Biton replied that he was not eager to cancel and demanded a NIS 300,000 subsidization to install the system into older cars.
Michaeli's report revealed that only 5% of new cars since the beginning of the year were manufactured with the system. For cars that do not yet have a system, 22 companies' systems were approved. the price of the systems ranges between NIS 150 and NIS 500, and installation can cost up to NIS 1,000.
"I don't think there is any disagreement on the fact that the issue was not discussed in a professional and organized manner, so we took time to look into it," said Michaeli in the meeting. "I think that if a government is going to impose requirements on its citizens, there needs to be a very good reason, and the government shouldn't feel like it wrote a law and now everything is okay. If we want to impose this law, we need to have a real justification for its efficiency. From what we've seen thus far, it seems that these requirements are not met."
Deputy Director-General of the Transportation Ministry Avner Floor said that the ministry is still looking into the matter. Currently, only Italy has this law in effect, and Floor said that they have not been able to determine if it was effective or not.
MK Boaz Toporowski reminded the committee that the law was pushed by the Transportation Ministry, who had explained its importance. He added that the law was passed after a professional discussion, and it doesn't make sense that now it's being called a folly.
Biton concluded the meeting, saying that the meeting was meant to deal with updates, but that had not been achieved. He added that there would be another meeting at the end of December that will only discuss updates.
"For the next meeting, bring solutions and not explanations," he said. "It's unfortunate that we held a meeting to get updates on the actualization [of the law] and instead get an explanation that it isn't even necessary."