With 65 days left before the end of year, the Road Safety Unit (RSU) is voicing strong concern about the prevalence of deadly traffic crashes across the island.

In spite of a reduction over last year’s figures the RSU insists that the island’s death toll is still way too high.

“Over the last three days, five precious Jamaicans died in unnecessary traffic crashes,” RSU director, Kenute Hare, commented on Wednesday while making special mention of a horrible crash along Spanish Town Road in Kingston that claimed the lives of two elderly women.

“The crashes occurred because motorists failed to practise proper road etiquette,” said Hare.

Since the start of the year 235 people have been killed from 217 fatal crashes compared to 269 fatalities from 240 fatal crashes in 2009.

Even with a death per day for the rest of the year, achieving the below 300 target set by traffic authorities now seems within reach.

“We can go below that but there are certain things we have to observe to get there Hare told Auto. “Excessive speeding, improper overtaking and improper usage of the roadways by pedestrians will all have to be curtailed,” said Hare.

“We have to crank up spot checks,” he added, saying that the police should pay special attention to the Sandy Bay to Clarendon Park section of the roadway in Clarendon, the Queens highway and Drax Hall to AGR Byfield highway, both in St Ann.

Mentioning the cost of crashes, Hare remarked that over $1.5 billion has been spent by the Ministry of Health to treat persons injured in traffic crashes and placed the burial cost to families at over $100 million this year.

“Let us do better than that, so that we can use our nation’s resources much better, rather than treating persons injured in something that we all have the power within us to correct,” he said.