Kenyan motorists got some good news this week. The Senate has annulled three sets of traffic regulations that the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) rolled out earlier this year, meaning none of them can now be enforced.
The rules in question were the Traffic (School Transport) Rules, 2026, the Traffic (Motor Vehicle Inspection) Rules, 2026, and the NTSA (Operation of Commercial Vehicles) Regulations, 2026.
The Senate‘s Select Committee on Delegated Legislation reviewed all three and recommended they be annulled under the Statutory Instruments Act. The full House adopted that recommendation, formally cancelling the regulations.
The inspection rules were probably the most controversial of the three. They would have required private vehicles older than four years to undergo annual inspections, at a cost of roughly KES 1000 to KES 2000 each time.
Before this, private cars were mostly exempt from mandatory inspections, with the requirement falling mainly on public service vehicles, commercial vehicles, driving school cars and government fleets.
The High Court had already suspended these particular rules weeks earlier, after a petition was filed challenging whether they were even constitutional.
The school transport rules would have forced school vehicles to meet a longer list of safety standards, including seat belts, fire extinguishers, GPS tracking systems, specific color coding and set qualifications for drivers, attendants and the guards who help children cross the road.
The commercial vehicle regulations would have required operators to fit their vehicles with telematics systems, speed governors and underride protection devices, on top of new limits on driver working hours and mandatory safety training.
NTSA had defended the changes as necessary for cutting down road crashes and making sure only roadworthy vehicles stayed on the road, but the pushback was swift.
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Motorists, transport operators and schools complained that the rules would push up costs significantly and said they hadn’t been properly consulted before the regulations were introduced.
NTSA had already quietly suspended enforcement of some of the more demanding requirements, like the school bus signal arms and telematics installations, even before the Senate’s decision.
The Motorists Association of Kenya welcomed the annulment as a major win, saying it sends a clear message to NTSA that any future road safety rules need to be backed by solid data and proper engineering, not just imposed on vehicle owners.
For now, the cancelled rules cannot be enforced, but this isn’t necessarily the end of the story. The government can still go back, address the concerns that were raised, and bring revised versions of the regulations through the proper approval process.
