Road fatalities surpass 2017 total

The Road Safety Unit in the Ministry of Transport of Mining is projecting that there could be at least 358 road fatalities by the end of the year.

The unit revealed that at the end of November, fatalities had surpassed 322, the total number of people killed last year.

"Some 326 persons have been killed already on the road network," Kanute Hare, director of the unit, told The Gleaner on Friday.

"Last year, 322 died, and the way it is going, the road fatality total for the year is projected to be 358. So how we operate until the end of the year is going to be very important, but it is with great trepidation that I look forward to December 31st."

More than 30 of the persons killed this year were not wearing seat belts, negligence which significantly reduced their chances of survival, the Road Safety Unit said.

Hare told The Gleaner: "We know that many of these persons could have been saved because the seat belt and helmet give you a fighting chance of surviving. When you don't use them, you are denying yourself that chance to survive, and the asphalt is punishing.

DANGEROUS PLACE

"People need to recognise that the traffic environment is a dangerous place and so they need to drive for each other. All of the people who died since the start of the year, none of the crashes make sense, and a lot of them could have been avoided. The only exception which would qualify as a freak accident was where a driver lost control of a truck in August Town (St Andrew) and it jumped off the road into a yard and one person was killed. The victims could not avoid that because there was nothing that would have prepared them for it, but when you look at all the others, you see the human element playing a critical role in terms of the behaviour out there."

Alcohol use and drugs, as well as fatigue, continue to be factors in road crashes, Hare disclosed, and is a major concern for the Road Safety Unit. He said up to November 23, 32 people were killed during the course of the month. However, he is optimistic that the month of December will average only one death per day.

"Christmas is coming, and when we look at road deaths from 2001 to 2017, there is a possibility that 31 persons could be killed in December on the road network based on forecasting. That is why we beg people to be careful, because we see these numbers glaring at us, [and] not declining, that is why we beg people to behave themselves."

He continued: "Another thing that persons fail to understand is that once you put any form of alcohol in your system, any form of drugs, impairment begins immediately. But some of us have a false notion that we can hold [our] liquor, we can hold we [the] drugs, but that is a figment of your imagination, and quite a number of the crashes, the drivers were under the influence of alcohol and they end up dead, and some of them end up killing other people, too."