EDITORIAL - Drive to stay alive
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that road traffic injuries are the tenth leading cause of death globally, resulting in 1.3 million deaths each year, equating to some 3 400 people losing their lives every single day. Speed is said to be one of the major causes of serious and fatal accidents, and it was no surprise therefore that during the Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week held last May, that it called attention to the dangers of speed with the view of getting countries to put measures in place to address speed and by extension save lives.
It is safe to say that Barbados is recording too many road traffic accidents and indeed too many road fatalities, and given that there has been no official word on the cause of those accidents, we can only speculate as to the reasons why so many people are being injured and losing their lives on our nation’s roads. Over the last few years we have been seeing double-digit fatalities: in 2014 there were 14; 2015, 22 road deaths were recorded; 2016 saw 10, and last year we had 28 deaths.
This reality has been most disheartening given the fact that it has occurred during the period the United Nations has designated as the Decade of Action for Road Safety, to stabilise and then reduce the level of road deaths across the globe by 50 per cent. With just two years left in that period, one cannot help but lament that Barbados has certainly not been achieving either of the identified goals. Instead of doing as the Decade advocates, and reducing the number of deaths on our roads, our figures remain high.
Some may argue that we here in Barbados are more fortunate than other countries in the Caribbean, which see triple digit fatalities. For example, Trinidad in 2017 recorded a total of 117 road deaths and while it was the lowest they had seen in some 22 years, one cannot help but argue that figure is still too high. Jamaica, too, is on the decline recording in 2017, 320 road fatalities, and again like Trinidad that figure is below the number recorded in 2016, which stood at 361. Additionally, Jamaica recorded a 30 per cent reduction in collisions compared with 2016.
We here in Barbados should take a leaf out of the books of these Caribbean neighbours and try to see a reduction in our road accidents and fatalities as well. We would like to think that we have taken a step in the right direction having passed the Road Safety (Amendment) Act and laid the Regulations in Parliament – the next step is to ensure that the
legislation is proclaimed with haste and put into action. We say that given that we are now 25 days into 2018, and already we have recorded two road fatalities.
Because we cannot wish this problem away, in addition to the Act, we need a higher level of police presence on our roads to help curb the incidence of reckless, drunk and distracted driving being exhibited by motorists.
In this vein, we wish to commend Co-operators General Insurance for recently launching their Driver’s Pledge initiative to encourage motorists to practise road safety and we wish to encourage other insurance companies to do likewise. We feel strongly that they have a responsibility to help protect their policyholders, including mandating that they attend a defensive driving programme if they have been involved in a serious accident.
The reality we must face head on is that we are losing too many of our productive citizens as a result of vehicular accidents. Added to the loss of life, serious accidents and fatalities are putting a burden on our economy and our health care sector – more reasons why steps must be taken to ensure that we bring those numbers down.