7 News Belize

Rating Belize’s Roads
posted (September 2, 2011)
Two nights ago, we told you about the specialized van which would be making fine tuned assessment and analysis of the quality and safety of Belize's roadways.

Well, the van is in country, and it's already been working on the roads. Today, the project was officially launched - and we found out more about this high tech van:..

Jules Vasquez Reporting
It's called the Orange Angel - equipped with six cameras, four lasers, four computers, tons of other gadgetry and six people to operate it all - and it's worth about seven hundred thousand US dollars.

Carlos Lopez, IRAP
"We have 5 cameras, 5 perspectives one in the front of the vehicle, 2 at 45 degrees angles in order that we have the full vision, so that the driver has when he is driving on the road."

The idea is to capture the experience as the driver does, turn that into data and analyse it in the end rating each road

Cadet Henderson, CEO, MOW
"There will be a star system from star 1 to 5 and just my guess, maybe Placencia road maybe rated 4 star, even though that is one of our best effort, but it's yet to be seen, and maybe many of our road maybe 1, 2, 3 star rated."

Jules Vasquez
"Which road do you fair will get the lowest rating?"

Cadet Henderson, CEO, MOW
"I think the lowest rating would be areas on the Northern Highway that are maindering, that have inadequate refuges on the shoulder for vehicles to pull over in the case of, in the event of emergency."

Carlos Lopez, IRAP
"We will tell the government the answer to your question. We will say ok, your roads range from 3 stars to 1 star or from 3 stars to 5 or this particular one is the 4 star, but this one is only 1 star etc."

Once those ratings are assigned the idea is that funding would then be pursued.

Carlos Lopez, IRAP
"We will present and proposed to them a package of investment, so what we do, is that we tell the government, how they can invest their money in the smartest way. In the most intelligent ways, in order to have a high return."

Cadet Henderson, CEO, MOW
"Our expectation is that the Caribbean Development Bank will then provide us with funds to do a first phase of the implementation of the corrective measures. Whether it mean reconstruction, resealing, shoulder widening, line marking, removal of speed deterrence that could be considered a hazard, or installation of new ones, signage and the light."

But it about more than computers and grant funds:

Carlos Lopez, IRAP
"Let me tell you that every 5 days in this country one person dies, every 5 day. We are talking about 70 people each year that they passed away. So our question is, can we do anything to avoid that? Can we work on that? Are we responsible somehow to allow this situation? Many people called them "accidents", we are against this terminology, and these are not accident."

And if you're worried that all these good intentions, all this high tech gadgetry will be reduced to one rattling mess by Belize's bad road - he says it's made for this:

Carlos Lopez, IRAP
"So this problem is specifically designed for the high risk roads, so we are prepared to work in high risk roads."

The van should be finished in the next four to five days. It will make its assessment of 600 kilometers or about 375 miles of the Northern, Western, Southern and Hummingbird highways as well as the Placencia road, the Airport Road and the road to the Big Creek Port…

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