Traffic Chief Ramesh Ashram yesterday reported that a total of 26 persons have lost their lives in road accidents for the year so far.
Senior Superintendent Ashram was at the time speaking at the first National Road Safety Stakeholders Forum for the year during which participants were tasked with developing a comprehensive plan of action aimed at not only reducing road deaths but also injuries, crashes and property damage caused by accidents.
The plan will cover the next five years and the goal is to reduce road accidents by 50% by then.
Ashram, who said even one death on a road is too much, noted that for the year so far the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has recorded a total of 20 fatal accidents, which resulted in 26 deaths.
In 2021, Ashram said, there were 87 fatal accidents with 99 deaths—the lowest number of fatal accidents within the past decade.
Ashram explained that an analysis has shown that a majority of the accidents occurred shortly before or after midnight.
The main contributing factors in these accidents were driving under the influence, speeding, failure to adhere to basic traffic rules and inattentiveness.
Highlighting the increase of vehicles on the roadways over the years and the growth in the country’s economy, Ashram said the Traffic Department’s focus is to reduce the occurrence of fatal accidents and other categories of accidents.
As a result, he explained that traffic ranks are strategically positioned to manage traffic throughout the country coupled with continuous traffic enforcement and education.
“We could implement the system, we could lecture, we could share flyers and everything but it’s you the road users—it’s you who take it in,” he said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of the Guyana Road Safety Council Surendra Khayum said that statistics revealed that globally approximately 1.3 million persons die on roadways and about 50 million suffer from injuries as a result of road accidents every year.
“Definitely this pattern trend is alarming and should be noted. therefore, the topic of road safety must not be taken lightly,” Khayum said.
