MONTEGO BAY, St James – The National Road Safety Council wants to phase the word “accident” out of the Jamaican psyche and current national road safety policy, in keeping with an international trend which seeks to put the onus of road safety on motorists and pedestrians.

“It makes sense. A lot of times you hear people saying ‘oh, I was in an accident…’, but as the World Health Day theme puts it, Road Safety is no accident. What we have are crashes and collisions which are predictable as they are caused by various factors such as speeding, overloading, defective tyres and other breaches,” said Paula Fletcher, the executive director of the Road Safety Council.

The council, a non-profit organisation, was set up by public and private sector interests in 1993 to promote road safety. In 1999, it crafted a national road safety policy document at the request of then prime minister, P J Patterson, in the aftermath of a five-vehicle collision along the Ironshore main road in Montego Bay that left four children and two adults dead.

Eleven others were critically injured in that crash.

Part of Fletcher’s effort will also be directed at changing the language of that policy document which refers to collisions and crashes as accidents.

“You won’t find the word accident in any international document regarding road safety. the current policy was actually drafted in 1999 and the language was different at that time,” she said.