Politics aside, the one thing which never seems to change very much in this country is the recklessness of so many of our drivers. There was Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill telling the public last week that there had been a 28% reduction in road deaths last year compared to 2020. However, before anyone was tempted to the view that this represented progress, he went on to qualify it by saying that citizens still continued to die at an “alarming” rate.
And so they do. There was the horrendous case recently in De Willem of a vehicle mowing down three men who were in front of a sports bar. It then continued into the bar itself where it injured two others inside. Unsurprisingly eyewitnesses confirmed it was being driven at high speed, and that the driver had lost control of the car slamming first into a parked Nissan X-trail. Its velocity was such that the dead were found not where they were hit, but scattered around the scene, while inside the bar a section of the counter was torn down on account of the force of the impact. It has been alleged that the driver was racing.
We have reported on other cases this year too, such as the death of a 24-year-old motor cyclist following an accident on the Agricola Public Road. He had also hit a pedestrian who died subsequently. Then last month a man and his girlfriend were killed and several people injured including four police officers, following a high-speed chase which ended in a four-vehicle crash.
According to the statistics from the Ministry of Works 139 people were killed in fatal accidents in 2020, as opposed to 99 in 2021. Minister Edghill was quoted as saying that what was notable was that “the vulnerable class of road users (pedal cyclists, motor cyclists and pedestrians) accounted for 67.7% of the total deaths in 2021 [while] in 2020 they accounted for 79.9% of the total deaths.” What conclusions can be derived from these figures is not altogether clear. With regard to pedal and motorcycists alone, the Minister said that this group accounted for 37.4% of road deaths in 2021, compared to 56.1% in 2020.
Perhaps a more informative figure in relation to our road safety situation is revealed if the number of serious accidents and the injuries resulting therefrom is compared for the two years, rather than the number of fatalities. Last year there were 362 serious accidents which caused 397 people to be injured, while there were 329 such accidents in 2020, resulting in 356 injuries. This represents an 11.5% and 10% increase in serious accidents and injuries over 2020. Any optimism deriving from the decrease in fatalities, therefore, is certainly misplaced.
The Minister appealed to all pedal and motorcyclists and their pillion riders to use helmets, and for pedestrians to exercise caution when crossing roads. He alluded to the expansion of the road network as well as the advent of four-lane highways which will require the exercise of good judgement. He did not omit to insist that seat belts be used in vehicles, and appealed to those with responsibility for children to promote road safety.
None of these kinds of exhortation are new, of course, and sectors of the public have been ignoring them for decades. But the Minister was obviously also looking at sanctions, since he was reported as saying he would examine legislation to ensure there were stricter controls such as the training and re-training of drivers and riders, higher fines or stiffer penalties and an approach to the introduction of a demerit system.
Mr Edghill was partly echoed by Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn who made reference to the recent road fatalities and was quoted as saying in a statement, “The recent accidents and continued reckless road use by identifiable sections of road users make the case for heightened enforcement, increasing fines and sanctions and renewed interventions for public awareness in respect of road safety and traffic management.” He went on to identify speeding, driving under the influence and driving without due care and attention as the main causes of traffic accidents. It might be remarked that in terms of causation, this is no revelation to the public.
Minister Benn went on to indicate that it was the intention of the Ministry to see that the Police Force improved on its performance from last year by instituting the necessary measures to have improvements in road safety. It is not that everyone does not recognise that the police are critical to any such exercise, it is just that they are sceptical, since apart from periodic campaigns, no Minister of Home Affairs has yet succeeded in getting them to improve on their performance in this regard.
In the first place one suspects that the Traffic Police like the other departments are understaffed, and are therefore in no position to flood the streets as they should do if they are to make an impact on the rate of accidents. They are not usually to be found out and about in the evening, for example, when the racing of cars and motorcycles takes place, or when the inebriated stagger out of the hostelries to get into their cars to drive home. The De Willem accident, for instance, occurred around 9.30 pm.
Higher fines and stiffer penalties have their place, but they are meaningless if the police cannot enforce the law. Corruption has been a particular problem in the Traffic section for a very long time, and until that is brought under control higher fines will simply play into the hands of corrupt officers. If the speed cameras which were promised at an earlier stage are brought in, that should alleviate matters, depending, of course, on how many are installed.
Even those, however, will not necessarily obviate completely against corruption; it will be a lot trickier than a constable on the road accepting a ‘raise’ from a driver whose papers are not in order, but still not impossible.
Then there are the road safety education programmes. We’ve had a lot of those in one form or another over the decades, but there is no evidence they have had any impact on the adult population, at least. Minister Edghill appealed to teachers and guardians of children to promote road safety, and while concentrating on children is probably the right way to go, such instruction needs to be organised.
Perhaps the authorities could return to what has been done in the past and send a personable, articulate police officer who can relate to young children in primary schools to teach them how to cross a road, or walk on a road safely, etc. It might be noted that it is not always drivers who are responsible for pedestrian accidents; some pedestrians are very irresponsible when crossing roads, and seem to have no idea that a vehicle does not stop immediately once the brakes are applied. Teaching children, at least, the basics, would be a start.
Reckless driving is a particular problem in a country like this where apart from everything else the roads are unsafe on account of their design. Very few streets have pavements for pedestrians, added to which signage is not always very clear and sometimes is lacking entirely. With the expansion and upgrading of the road network in the offing, it can be anticipated that the number of serious accidents will increase substantially unless the authorities move to take the problem in hand in a sustained way.
