More deaths than last year

 Sheldon Wiliams, Staff Reporter

June, which is observed as Road Safety Month, also marks the close of the first half of the year, making it an ideal assessment point for progress made or ground lost, compared to the previous year.

Fatalities remain a concern for road safety advocates as, according to statistics provided by the National Road Safety Council (NRSC), there were 157 traffic fatalities from January 1 to June 25, compared to 138 for the corresponding period in 2013.

A breakdown shows 73 recorded fatalities for the second quarter (April to June). Twenty-six persons died on the roads in April, 23 in May and 24 in June.

Even as she insists that more needs to be done, Paula Fletcher, executive director of the NRSC, points to the organisation's efforts. "We had the poster competition. We have to work from all ends, so we are working on the young minds and we got good response in terms of the number and quality of entries. So at least in schools we are having the conversations with them, because we really have to address their minds to the scene and to represent the situation," she said.

"And if you hear some of them explain what they are trying to represent on the posters, you really get the sense that this is one way we are trying to engage our children to be safe users of the road," she reasoned.

Safety expo

The NRSC also participated in the annual Jamaica Driver and Traffic Safety Expo, held at Jamaica College on Saturday, June 21. "We had a tent, as usual, and we handed out a number of brochures dealing with safety matters, vulnerable road users, speed and alcohol, and that sort of thing. We went into an interactive mode with those persons who actually came to the expo," Fletcher explained.

"We also ran some of our usual ads during the period promoting pedestrian safety ... because if we target pedestrians we reduce road fatalities by about a third," she added.

She suggested that new interventions, especially those utilising technology, are needed to strengthen road safety. "One of the things I am pushing for is for us to work towards having electronic surveillance. That has to be the next step," Fletcher insisted. "The National Works Agency has done some work with traffic management where they have underground cables and they are able to look at traffic using cameras, so there is perhaps some infrastructural work that we could overlay or connect to," Fletcher added.

More than 300 persons lost their lives in road crashes in Jamaica in 2013, far exceeding the hoped-for reduction to under 240.