BRACO, Trelawny — Head of the Police Traffic Division, Senior Superintendent Calvin Allen, is recommending that adequate traffic signage be erected on the Braco leg of the Northern Coastal Highway in an effort to ensure the safety of motorists.

“We will be recommending to the NWA [National Works Agency] the erection of additional signage at appropriate points to alert the oncoming motorists to this area, which we have designated as a bad spot,” said SSP Allen.

“We really need to alert them of the dangers of using the roadway, especially when the road is wet, because too many lives have been lost here,” he added.

The senior cop was speaking with reporters yesterday at the site of Sunday’s bizarre two-vehicle collision on the Braco main road, which left four foreign nationals dead.

They were identified as Sergio Gonzales, Garvin Arias and Ruiz Rafael of the Dominican Republic and Oliver Torres of Spain, who were all employed at a St Ann hotel.

There have been many accidents — several resulting in fatalities — on that section of the roadway in recent years, prompting calls for adequate measures to be implemented to reduce the carnage.

But despite the increased vigilance of the police in the area, and an education programme, the wanton loss of lives persists.

Yesterday, SSP Allen — who was accompanied to Braco by senior members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, including Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Patrick Murdock, DSP Gary McKenzie and Superintendent Courtney Coubroe — reiterated his call for motorists to observe the speed limit.

“We are calling on motorists to observe the speed limit and be alert, especially in this area because this road, having been laid more than 10 years ago, would have now been polished based on the volume of traffic that would have traversed this area, and so the driving lane are a little smoother. And so drivers are therefore required to exercise that level of awareness especially when it is raining…,” SSP Allen argued.

Officials from the Ministry of Transport and Works, which included Kanute Hare, director of the Road Safety Unit in the ministry, and civil engineers from the NWA Junior Maylor and Stephanie Bromfield, also visited the scene of the deadly crash.

There they examined dislocated parts from the mangled motor vehicles involved in Sunday’s accident, which littered the roadside.

The crash catapulted the number of people killed in motor vehicle accidents to 52 since the start of the year.

Last year a total of 330 persons died in fatal crashes on the nation’s roads.

SSP Allen told reporters that yesterday’s visit to the scene of the crash formed part of the investigations into the matter, being undertaken by the police.

“We have taken this journey to see where the accident occurred and to have a first-hand knowledge. And our assessment has shown so far that the roadway is very wide and it is not an acute corner, either, so we are assessing the situation to see what would have caused that situation,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Hare said that based on what he had observed “it is clear that high speeds were involved”.

“A lot of energy was dissipated here by the truck and the car that were involved in the accident,” he stressed.

He said, however, that measures should be implemented to increase the “skid resistance on the roadway,” where the crash occurred, in an effort to reduce the likelihood of accidents in the area, adding that motorists must be able to adjust to various road conditions.

Earlier this week, a civil engineer who visited the crash site questioned the type of material that was used in the construction of the roadway at Braco.

“It’s not a matter of how the road was constructed; it’s a matter of what was used in the construction of the roadway. The aggregate used appears to be faulty,” said the engineer, who did not want to be named.