Too high a price to pay for mobility

Last Friday’s media release issued by the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) on the subject of the country’s traffic tribulations appears to have derived from some of the outcomes of the February 1920 Third Ministerial Conference on Road Safety held in Stockholm, Sweden. If it is not customary for our private sector agencies to evince a great deal of publicly expressed mindfulness (here we are stating this as a fact rather than suggesting an inherent uncaring disposition on the part of the private sector) on international developments in road use and traffic administration, it should at least be noted that, unusually, a local Business Support Organization is doing so on this occasion.

It may well be that the GCCI’s statement simply came against the backdrop of our recent profusion of traffic calumnies, not least the spate of recent road fatalities, including multiple ones, arising in a significant number of instances out of insufficient mindfulness of the importance of the practice of safety on our roads. There has, incidentally, been no shortage of recent comment in this newspaper’s editorial columns on this issue even though the high price that continues to be paid on account of a lack of mindfulness appears to be resulting in no significant change in patterns of road use behaviour.

While, therefore, there is a quizzical underpinning to the Chamber of Commerce’s recent press release, what is has to say about responsible road use would certainly appear to herald (at least we hope so) at least an enhanced awareness of the high price that we are paying for our road use delinquencies.

The Chamber’s media release, as has already been mentioned, coincides with the staging of the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety held in Stockholm at which, as far as we are aware, Guyana was not represented. The deliberations in Stockholm reportedly made various poignant observations regarding the nexus between the global road use culture and the proliferation of road accidents across the world. Many of the discourses appeared to revolve around the findings of research undertaken by specialized UN agencies, including the World Health Organization. One particular disclosure, that road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged between 5 and 29, may well have prompted the altogether appropriate remark by the WHO’s Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, that continually mounting global road fatalities represent “an unacceptable price

to pay for mobility.”

The GCCI’s media release also pays some measure of attention to the WHO’s observation that while low and middle income countries have approximately 60 per cent of the world’s vehicles using their roads, they account for 93 per cent of the world’s road fatalities. These statistics can perhaps be accounted for by the fact that developed countries benefit from better road networks, more efficiently executed traffic management regimes, a more acute mindfulness of speed limits and more responsible road use habits deriving from continued rehearsal and a consequential ingrained safety consciousness. The absence and/or deficiency of some or all of these road use considerations here in Guyana almost certainly accounts for many if not most of our road accidents.

Finally, there is the problem of a traffic management regime that is, in many respects, seriously retarded by unchanging deficiencies that raise searching questions about the management acumen of those in charge. Then there is the unchanging culture of corruption in aspects of traffic administration, a circumstance to which the Force’s administration appears to have struck a mind-bogglingly quixotic posture. Here, we feel compelled to make the point, for the umpteenth time that while effective traffic management continues to be negatively impacted by resource-related deficiencies, (the Police Traffic Department possesses neither the manpower nor the level of vehicular and technology-related support to provide an effective countrywide traffic management regime) it continues to be rendered far worse by an unyielding culture of corruption and influence peddling which, among other things, afford some road users exemption from lawful penalty for transgressions and in effect, renders them uncaring of safety-related traffic laws. This leaves our national traffic administration hopelessly stranded, in effect, corroding our national road safety regime. Conclusion? By living in denial about corruption in the execution of on-the-road traffic administration, those who manage the system are, in effect, simply shooting themselves in the foot.

Again, all of this is what one might call ‘old hat,’ but in our view, more than deserving of repetition. Against the backdrop of the seemingly unending processions either to the graveyards and hospital wards, we have also alluded to the lack of mindfulness of ‘helmet laws.’ Not too many people, it seems, are listening. There is, as well, easy to find evidence of a shocking indifference on the part of police car or motor cycle patrols which, quite often, are in close proximity to the transgressors. To return to the GCCI’s recent statement, while it is all well and good that it was issued “in solidarity with the United Nations,” it is apposite to wonder whether, given the numbers of local private sector-owned and managed vehicles that use our roads, it might not be appropriate for the Chamber and indeed the broader private sector, to, as well, fashion (in collaboration with the Police Traffic Department) and rigidly enforce a set of road use protocols (that fall within the ambit of the pre-existing ones) to govern the use of their own vehicles on our roads. Where such rules are well thought out and effectively enforced that ought to bring about a discernable improvement in our wider traffic administration regime since there are numerous instances in which private sector-owned vehicles are directly responsible for serious road accidents to say nothing about the challenges that some of these pose for day-to-day traffic administration. There is an opportunity here for the private sector to put its money where its mouth is, in a matter of particular national importance even as the promised business-driven growth and expansion of the country’s economy appears likely to bring with it greater challenges for traffic administration. The private sector should help us prepare for that eventuality.