Crash Course in Road Safety

Forgive the pun but I learnt quite a lot about  the efforts to reduce the number and severity of road accidents recently.

Senior Advisor to Road Safety Support, Adam Briggs, visited Jamaica from the UK and was pleased by the willingness and efforts by Jamaica to reduce road accidents and fatalities.

During his visit, he met with the National Road Safety Council, the head of traffic in the Jamaican Constabulary Force, Kenute Hare and his team at the Road Safety Unit and the  National Works Agency. He also attended a broad-based meeting of stakeholders at the Ministry of Transport and Works facilitated by Minister Morais Guy. All concerned conceded that there was a lot of work to be done to achieve their goals.

In fact, I thought the numbers were quite shocking. In 2013, there were 306 fatalities recorded on the island which has a total of 2.7 million people. Among the most vulnerable are motorcycle riders and pedestrians. And sadly, most of the fatalities are preventable. Among the easy wins would be getting motorcyclists to wear their helmets and for those walking on the road, particularly at night, to avoid dark clothing.

Fatalities had a noticeable decline, which coincided with a major awareness campaign that was developed by the National Road Safety Commission – the group tasked with education effort, in 2012. The amount of fatalities dropped below 300 for the first time in 12 years but has begun to increase incrementally. In first half of this year they are already 175 deaths attributed to road accidents, well on its way to surpassing the 2013 total.  But there is help on the way.

Founded and staffed by highly qualified ex-policemen from the UK, Road Safety Support aims to provide training and develop infrastructure to reduce fatalities. The organizations functions as a non-profit in the UK but does charge fees outside of the UK for their services. Many of the countries that they operate in do not have the infrastructure that the UK does to combat the issue of safer roads, so the work they do overseas is far more complex. He pointed out that many of the key elements needed to solve the problems in Jamaica were already existing but there were other issues – mostly caused by a lack of financial and trained human resources, which needed to be addressed.

There are some very hopeful signs. A new Road Traffic Act is now before Jamaica’s parliament and promises stiffer fines for infractions, additions to address driver distractions like mobile phones and better governance. There also seems to be a push to implement electronic surveillance which should act as a deterrent and also increase the Government’s revenues. No one likes more fines, especially someone like me who has been known to try to move the speedometer more to the right, but we would all like safer roads. I am prepared to conform or pay (more of the former hopefully!).

Road Safety Support is planning to return to Jamaica later this year to stage a conference to bring together new thinking on issues and also for road safety professionals in the Caribbean to have a forum to share their challenges and their learnings.