Jamaica can become road-safety model
IN THREE years, Jamaica can become the model for road safety in the region if work continues on five critical areas, according to Jean Todt, special envoy for road safety to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“Jamaica has all the ingredients of the puzzle to be the kind of example (for road safety),” Todt told The Gleaner yesterday in an interview at the company’s Kingston offices.
Over the period January 1 to August 9, Jamaica has recorded 240 road-related deaths. That is a four per cent increase in road fatalities so far this year when compared with the similar period in 2015, data from the Road Safety Unit in the transport ministry show.
Agencies such as the National Road Safety Council have expressed alarm at the increase and the nature of the crashes – 10 of which have claimed 38 lives.
Todt identified the critical areas as education, law enforcement, road infrastructure, road regulations, and post-crash care, which he disclosed were discussed with Prime Minister Andrew Holness and a Jean Todt, special envoy for road safety to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaks with The Gleaner at the newspaper’s North Street, Kingston, offices yesterday.
government team, including Transport Minister Mike Henry and Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett.
“Law enforcement we have been debating. I don’t want to be too optimistic, because I don’t want to be disappointed, but I really had the feeling that leading police people know where they are and what they want to do.”
Jamaica’s road infrastructure, Todt said, “requires some improvement”.
He said those issues could get attention through support from the Inter-American Development Bank.
On post-crash care, the UN envoy said Jamaica “has everything available to make sure that between the moment of the crash and until the moment the injured person arrives at the hospital is less than one hour”.
“If you put all the puzzle together, you will be able to make a fantastic result,” he said.
ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS
Meanwhile, Todt, who heads the International Automobile Federation, has acknowledged that responses to road-safety issues are influenced by economic considerations which create a wide gap between socalled developing and developed countries.
According to the World Health Organization’s 2015 global status report on road safety, low-income countries have fatality rates that more than double those in highincome countries.
Ninety per cent of road traffic deaths occur in low- and middleincome countries, yet these countries have just 54 per cent of the world’s vehicles, it added.