Zero tolerance!
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
The police is to adopt a zero tolerance approach to motorists who fail to buckle up and riders who refuse to wear their helmets.
This will form part of a major new drive to reduce the number of road fatalities recorded annually.
Up to December 21 the police were reporting 322 road fatalities across the island. This was slightly down from the 333 reported over the corresponding period last year and on target to finish below the 343 road deaths reported for all of 2008.
But that has not satisfied the National Road Safety Council (NRSC) and the Road Safety Unit in the Ministry of Transport which had targeted less than 300 deaths on the roads this year.
“The issue of seat belt usage is a serious concern particularly for persons in the passenger seats of motor vehicles,” Kenute Hare, director of the Road Safety Unit told The Gleaner.
“The police traffic department will be unleashing a zero tolerance approach for persons who don’t buckle up, particularly those in the back seats of cars,” Hare added.
bullets in a crash
He is being supported by Dr Lucien Jones, vice chairman and convenor of the NRSC who said passengers need to understand fully the protection given to persons who buckle up in the back seat of vehicles and the danger of non-use.
“Unrestrained back-seat passengers become bullets in a crash, putting not only themselves, but everyone in the vehicle at risk,” Jones said.
“That’s because unbelted back-seat passengers continue to move at the same rate of speed as the vehicle they’re riding in until they hit something - the back of the front seat, the dashboard, the windshield, the driver or another passenger. It’s also not uncommon for unbelted passengers to be thrown from a vehicle and either be crushed by that vehicle or another on the road,” added Jones.
According to Jones some people mistakenly believe it’s better to be thrown clear of the wreckage in the event of a crash, but this could not be further from the truth.
“The fact is, an occupant is four times as likely to be fatally injured when thrown from the vehicle. When you are not wearing a safety belt, your chances of being killed are almost 25 times higher if you are thrown from a vehicle in a crash.
“The law requires front and back seat occupants of motor vehicles to buckle up in the front as well as in the back - the law also applies to taxis,” Dr Jones noted.
“When the law was passed in 1999 an appeal by taxi drivers to the then Minister of Transport and Works resulted in him waiving the use of seatbelts in the back of taxis on a temporary basis. However, the law remained the same and is to be applied to persons in the back of taxis,” said Jones.
That is a regulation which the transport ministry will be encouraging the police to enforce.
“Most of the passengers killed in taxis this year were not wearing their seat belts while those on motor cycles, all male, died because they were not wearing helmets, Hare told The Gleaner.
For 2010 there will be another attempt to get the number of road fatalities down to under 300 but before that Jones has a message for all Jamaicans:
“I am appealing to my fellow Jamaicans to take extra care on the road to prevent the heartbreak that comes from loss of life and injury in road crashes,” Jones said.
Police to rev up seatbelt, helmet prosecutions; NRSC misses road fatalities target. (Jamaica Gleaner)