Dear Editor,
I refer to an article titled `Police launch major road safety operation today’ which was published in yesterday’s Guyana Chronicle.
Despite all of the dozens of articles and letters in the press recently, as well as pronouncements from the President and police, and Head of the National Road Safety Council, and despite the speculation about the myriad underlying causes of vehicle accidents, not one of them has mentioned the one factor that would have saved the lives of probably up to 30 per cent of the 114 people killed on Guyana roads in 2019 – that is the wearing of seat belts.
The wearing of seat belts should be compulsory for all back seat passengers as well as those in front seats.
It should be mandatory for truck drivers as well.
Taxis should be delicensed/taken off the road if seat belts are not in working condition.
Heavy fines should be levied for non-use of seat belts, and driver’s licences should be cancelled for repeat offenders.
Data about the wearing of seat belts from around the world:
From the USA:
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), more than 15,000 lives are saved each year in the United States because drivers and their passengers were wearing seat belts when they were in accidents.
Seat belts are the single most effective safety technology in the history of the automobile. A NHTSA study of lives saved by vehicle
technologies found that, between 1960 and 2012, seat belts saved more lives—329,715, to be exact—than all other vehicle technologies combined
Among front-seat passengers and drivers, for example, researchers have determined that wearing a proper safety restraint reduces the risk of serious injury by 50 percent and the risk of death by 45 percent.
From Victoria, Australia:
“Seat belts are important in preventing deaths and serious injuries in a crash and should be worn by all people travelling in vehicles including trucks.
Crash statistics show that:
an estimated 40 unbelted heavy vehicle drivers lose their life in Australia every year
seat belts would have prevented or reduced the injuries suffered by truck drivers in at least 60 per cent of the crashes studied
if heavy vehicle seat belt wearing rates matched the rate achieved by car drivers, it would reduce unbelted truck driver deaths by about half”.
Do you as a road user in Guyana want to die innocently when travelling safely in your own or a friend’s vehicle and your vehicle is hit by a drunken, speeding, texting-distracted idiot driving another vehicle?
No?
Then belt up every time you are in a vehicle, whether as a driver or passenger!
Yours faithfully,
Ian A. Christie