SANDY BAY, Hanover — With 135 days remaining until the end of the year and the country already recording more than 300 road fatalities, a concerned director of the Island Traffic Authority Kenute Hare is hoping a strong push to continue joint road spot checks with the Jamaica Constabulary Force will help stanch the flow of blood on the country’s roads.

“Over 300 persons have died on the road network already and that is cause for profound concern,” Hare told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday.

“We will ensure that the joint road spot/road safety operations with the Jamaica Constabulary Force continue unabated and we hope that persons will try to make a concerted effort to live to see December 31, 2022. Too many persons are doing things on the road network that causes them to die before their time,” Hare added.

His comment follows a series of collisions in Hanover, with one fatal crash on Tuesday.

Around 12:40 am that day, two cars travelling on the Tryall main road in Sandy Bay collided, leaving a man and a woman dead and a child injured.

The driver of a Mitsubishi sedan, 26-year-old Onieke Barnes from Bottom McQuarrie district in Hopewell, Hanover and Content District in St Elizabeth is among the dead. So too is 51-year-old Claudia Shaw from Sandy Bay in Hanover who was a passenger in a Mitsubishi hatchback that was also involved in the crash.

It was reported that Barnes was travelling from the direction of Sandy Bay towards St James when, on reaching a section of the Northern Coastal Highway in the vicinity of the Tryall Golf Club, the driver of the hatchback, which was travelling in the opposite direction, lost control as he navigated a corner and collided head-on with the sedan.

Barnes and Shaw reportedly showed no signs of life when firefighters and emergency medical service technicians arrived at the scene. Barnes was trapped and firefighters had to extricate him from the wreckage.

The other three individuals were transported to hospital, two by ambulance and the other in a private motor vehicle. Following the incident, Hare pointed to the importance of vehicles being roadworthy and drivers staying in their lanes.

“It is a very unfortunate situation that transpired in Hanover but it highlights the fact that the wanton misbehaviour that people are willing to execute on the road network — sometimes it causes their demise and sometimes it causes other persons to die. That is the reason why we at the Island Traffic Authority implore persons to remember that we have given them two products to operate motor vehicles on the road network: a driver’s licence and a certificate of fitness. When we were giving them to you, we never gave them to you to execute violations of the Road Traffic Act and regulations,” stated Hare.

Like Hare, Commander for the Hanover Fire Department Superintendent Tamara Snow is encouraging motorists “to be more careful and observe the speed limit”.

The collision on the Tryall main road took place hours before another crash in the parish, during rainfall, involving a Mitsubishi Fuso truck and a Toyota hatchback car on the Point Hill main road. It is not clear if anyone was seriously injured.

Minutes later, there was another collision. This time, two cars collided, resulting in damage to two others in the town of Hopewell. No one was apparently hurt in this incident.

Up to Tuesday, Hanover had recorded 18 road fatalities since the start of the year, pushing the countrywide number of traffic fatalities to 302.