Cedric Stephens | New thinking needed to tackle road carnage

“There’s no way that we can continue on this path.” Those were the words of Minister of Science, Energy, Telecommunications & Transport Daryl Vaz, in the context of his push for a public education campaign to help reduce the carnage on Jamaica’s roads.

Mr Vaz called the scores of road crashes and nearly 200 fatalities that occurred this year a national emergency.

Things were “getting from bad to worse and needed an immediate response through a properly structured public education campaign”, he said.

It was unclear whether the statements represented the minister’s opinion or those of his advisers or what a properly structured public education campaign looked like. Mr Vaz envisages 25 per cent of the government’s estimated $1.44 billion in traffic ticket fines being allocated to his ministry. It would be used to fund his proposed road behaviour-change campaign.

Did the hoped-for $360 million allocation go to the transport segment of the portfolio annually or did it represent a one-time cost? Implicit in the idea was the assumption that the campaign would help to reduce the carnage. What were the arguments to support this position?

As I read the news report about the press conference, I wondered whether our policymakers had learned any lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic and if they could be applied to the national emergency that has existed on our roads for many years. Both emergencies lead to illnesses, or injuries, and premature deaths, pain and suffering, the consumption of scarce resources in hospitals, disruptions in family life and workplaces, and have negative impacts on GDP.

None of the reports about the press conference provided any evidence that the lessons learned during the once-in-a-century pandemic were being studied and applied to gain insights into solving the recurring national emergency on our roads. Allocating $360 million in a public education campaign in the absence of a carefully crafted strategy would not reduce the carnage.

The National Road Safety Council describes itself as ‘the lead agency for the promotion of road safety in Jamaica. What is its role in the formulation of solutions to the problem?

What did the country learn when it mandated the wearing of seatbelts in motor vehicles many years ago? Are those lessons relevant today? Was a public education campaign the crucial factor for the practice to gain public acceptance? Alternatively, what strategies were employed to prevent smoking in public spaces or, more recently, to encourage citizens to practise more active lifestyles?

These examples have one thing in common: they were designed to promote changes in behaviours and to mitigate risks.

Data sourced, courtesy of Copilot, the AI in my Internet browser, disclosed the following metrics in discussing the effectiveness of seatbelts:

• The wearing of safety belts by front-seat passengers reduces the risk of fatal injuries by 45 to 50 per cent; and

• The wearing of seatbelts for back-seat occupants, reduces the risk of death and serious injuries by 25 per cent.

The average global compliance rate for the wearing of seatbelts was 91.9 per cent in 2023. The local compliance rate in 2017 (the latest date for which figures are available), according to the World Health Organization, was 54 per cent for passengers in the front seats and for drivers, and four per cent for passengers in the rear seats. What are the factors that account for Jamaica’s low rate of compliance?

Many people in my small circle are unaware that the Road Traffic Act and regulations have mandated the wearing of seatbelts in the back seats of vehicles, for many years.

Fatality data compiled by the Road Safety Unit for the years 2018 to 2023 show that there were 2,662 deaths, and that 1,034 of those deaths, or 38.8 per cent of that total, involved drivers and passengers. The number of motorcyclists killed during the period 2004 to 2022 amounted to 1,444.

The data do not say whether the deceased occupants of motor vehicles were wearing seatbelts at the time of the accidents. Had WHO’s rate of compliance with the seatbelt law been applied, the latter number of actual reported deaths associated with motor vehicles, excluding motorcycles, would have been lower.

The failure to establish mechanisms to accurately measure compliance with the seatbelt regulations on a consistent basis and to compare these data with international standards point, at best, to data collection problems and insufficient enforcement actions, and at worst, to the depletion of the country’s human capital.

I had no connection with the execution of the pandemic response strategy, or to the design, development, and execution of the public education campaign in relation to COVID-19. From my observation as an independent citizen, the public education component associated with the response strategy, played a small part of the broader programme.

A 2019 study conducted in Slovenia found that training and education is one of ‘the pillars of global road safety strategies’, but that ‘due to diversity and the extent of differences in evaluation methods, the influence of educational programmes on traffic safety is still limited’. The investigators indicated there was a link between driver errors, traffic violations, and accidents. People who participated in the authors’ programme ‘performed at a significantly higher level than those who did not’.

Motor insurers individually collect terabytes of information about motor vehicle accidents daily. Their data collection instruments, claim forms, supplemented by photos, videos, and dash camera footage, provide a richer source of information than the data collection form used by the JCF’s Public Safety and Enforcement Branch. Can insurers and the JCF agree on a standard form for all consumers of motor accident information, eliminate the completion of separate forms and processes when an accident is being reported, to save time and money?

If these data sources were to be anonymised, pooled, digitised, and analysed, they could be mined to provide a richer source of information that can be used to inform policy decisions, and resolve disputes beyond the abstract and sterile numbers recorded by the Road Safety Unit of the Island Traffic Authority.

Can Minister Vaz be persuaded to think more strategically about the problem, explore the opportunities for collaboration with motor and life insurers, and other parties, (employing the public-private-partnership approach) to develop a more comprehensive process to find solutions instead of using more scarce financial resources plus the ‘business as usual’ model to address a societal problem?

- Cedric E. Stephens provides independent information and advice about the management of risks and insurance. For free information or counsel, write to: aegis@flowja.com or business@gleanerjm.com