At the beginning of this month, you heard from survivors of motorcycle accidents and the medical professionals that care for them. You also heard from the authorities who are trying to lessen the sharply increasing number of fatal accidents. Well, since then, there have been three more fatal accidents - all teenagers. A 7 year old girl was also injured in an accident right here in the city.
Today the ComPol reiterated that there's not much else the police and the transport department can do in terms of enforcement - rather, it is up to those on the road to drive more carefully.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yesterday morning I watch the Beef on Channel 7 as a I normally do."
Courtney Menzies:
"We know that's your favorite show."
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Well, my Bally is on it so I watch to see if I'll be incinerated or half cooked or fully cooked. But on that show yesterday I noticed that Mr Vasquez brought up that topic and he said that there may a need for more enforcement. I really and truly don't know what else can the police and the department of transport do. We'll have to have police at every milepost or traffic officers at every milepost because as much as we do enforcements, putting in place checkpoints and highway patrols, when drivers approach the checkpoint, they slow down and when they're out of sight of that checkpoint they adapt their usual bad driving habit. We find that many of these accidents are a result of drivers not paying attention, driving without due care and attention. Motorcycles continue to be an issue. How we address that, I think that we have been able to do a number of sensitization, even creating flyers on safety tips on these motorcycles and even that is not helping. It certainly will require that drivers of motor vehicles and riders of motorcycles take more responsibility in ensuring that they exercise more caution in the driving of motor vehicles and the handling of motorcycles. Motorcycle riders at times tend to operate in such a way that the rules of the road don't apply to them, they have a separate rule that applies to them which is not the case and in some cases the drivers of motor vehicles have no regard for motorcycle riders so it's a dual issue that we have to look at to see how we can address it."
And like the Chief Transport Officer, the ComPol also added that they will be working to implement legislation to try and make the roads safer for drivers.
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