Dear Editor,
Thank you for publishing my letter on road safety and minibuses in yesterday’s edition of Stabroek News.
I hasten, as my fact-checking friends bombard my phone, to humbly apologize to you and your readership; for the demon that hides in every keyboard did strike, and instead of giving the statistics (WHO 2018) for Guyana, as averaging 25 road deaths per 100,000 persons, I incorrectly typed per 1,000 persons. Mea Culpa, or for the modernist, My bad! Liberia, was therefore the highest at 36 per 100,000. Africa dominates the Top fifty.
From hereabouts we also have St. Lucia – 35 (road deaths per 100,000 – 2nd highest), the Dominican Republic – 35 and 5th, Venezuela – 34, and Belize – 28. All minibus countries. A notable global outlier is Saudi Arabia – 29, 23rd highest.
The best? San Marino – 0, Maldives – 1. The UK – 3, is 8th lowest. The USA – 12, is not so great for the richest nation. Japan – 4, from whom we import all those buses, (and where they are not used for public transportation) has the 12th safest roads. Barbados – 6, one of the densest populated countries in the world, does remarkably well, ranking 23rd lowest. Our authorities should take a trip there – plenty roundabouts, good roads, possibly stricter regulation, minibuses only do short routes? Maybe in Guyana’s phase-out of minibuses, they could be restricted to the shorter routes. Jamaica – 13.6 is twice safer than us in road fatalities – not too shabby at all. The WHO study covered 175 countries and the data is available at Global status report on road safety 2018. Our road safety authorities would do well to study these pages.
Yours faithfully,
Keith Evelyn
