In the wake of continuing road deaths, the PNCR/APNU says it would establish a dedicated agency for traffic management and road safety if elected to office.
At a press conference on Friday, it said that the recent accident on Sheriff Street involving two sand trucks and which led to the death of electrician Carlton Smartt has yet again exposed the fact that the government has no urgency, no motivation and no plan to address the growing road carnage.
“This carnage continues to affect all our highways and all types of road users and vehicles: pedestrians, motorcycles, cars, minibuses, and trucks. The paltry measures on licensing and penalties the government announced (on Thursday) will have little impact and will not inspire any public confidence”, the party said.
It added that introducing harsher penalties without addressing infrastructural, regulatory, and enforcement failures is akin to placing a plaster on a gunshot wound.
At its July 19th Press Confer-ence, the party said that it submitted several approaches and measures, which the government has ignored. These had included (i) addressing congestion and road deaths within a policy framework that is data-driven; (ii) a review of traffic accident statistics must be urgently undertaken to determine the causes of accidents and their relative contributions, (iii) safety audits must be conducted on major roads. As part of this audit, all substandard design elements that contribute to reducing the safety of the roadway must be identified, such as rideability (the state of the surface of the road) and proximity of fixed objects to the carriageway, and (iv) robust education and enforcement programmes must become a norm.
“Let us add to these proposals our intention, as the next government, to establish a dedicated state agency to implement a comprehensive road safety and traffic management plan. We believe that the responsibility for road safety and traffic management must now extend beyond law enforcement and the Guyana Police Force”, the party added.
It said that the responsibilities of the proposed agency will include (i) the collection and processing of data on road usage, including traffic flows and accident statistics, (ii) the conduct of safety audits, with the timely identification of critical upgrades to enhance road users safety, (iii) the conduct of year-round education and awareness programmes, (iv) research of international best practices.
