For years road safety experts, policymakers and law enforcers have pointed the finger of blame at reckless motorists and other road users as carnage on the nation’s streets continued to accelerate. Now, some of those individuals are highlighting concerns on the other side of the coin — unsafe roads.

The National Road Safety Council (NRSC) and the traffic police are worried that the basic standards set out in the United Nations (UN) 2021-2030 target to reduce road fatalities by 50 per cent, through a “safe systems” approach, are not being met.

As set out in the UN General Assembly resolution 74/299 ‘Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021–2030’, these standards must include basic features such as vertical and horizontal marking (signs and painting); side walks; safe crossings; cycle paths; motorcycle lanes; bus lanes; safe roadsides; segregation of different modes of traffic; median separation of high-speed traffic; safe intersection design; and speed management suitable for the location, desired amenity and type of traffic.

Vice-chairman of the NRSC Dr Lucien Jones points out that, with road fatalities having tipped over the 300 mark so far this year, the country is now chasing last year’s 487 road body count.

“We really have to put a stop to this kind of carnage in the country. We have been calling for safe speeds and safe vehicles, it is now time for us to pay attention to safe roads. From reports, some of our roads across Jamaica no longer have clear markings, no longer have cats’ eyes so that people can see at nights, and this poses a tremendous danger to people who are travelling, especially in the wee hours of the morning. It is important for us to have safe roads, we know it costs a lot of money,” Dr Jones said, pointing to the troublesome stretch of “white roads” along the north coast which are in need of urgent resurfacing/rehabilitation.

“They are slippery when wet, and slippery even when it’s not wet,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

The safe systems approach anticipates and accommodates human errors; incorporates road and vehicle designs that limit crash forces to levels that are within human tolerance, thus preventing death or serious injury.

As per the UN declaration, this approach also “motivates those who design and maintain the roads, manufacture vehicles, and administer safety programmes to share responsibility for safety with road users, so that when a crash occurs, remedies are sought throughout the system, rather than solely blaming the driver or other road users”.

Head of the police’s Public Safety and Traffic Enforcement Branch, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Gary McKenzie, outlined myriad issues along numerous corridors.

“For one, we need to see more speed limit signs. Where they are present, there are overgrowth of shrubbery,” he said, pointing to the Dyke Road in St Catherine as an example, which is only now being cleared of overgrowth following police operations in the area in recent weeks.

“But this is just one of the roads where we have observed it. There are several other roads, especially main thoroughfares, where we need to ensure those signs are conspicuous,” he stressed.

He pointed out that overgrowth does more than block the clear view of motorists, pedestrians, and other road users, as it also cuts into actual road space.

“So what happens is that the traffic comes closer to the middle of the road. It [also] gives very little space for persons to observe to overtake, and we have a lot of near misses and in some instances crashes as a result of that, so we really need to get these addressed.”

McKenzie said the absence of road markings at intersections to guide drivers to stop, and pedestrians with crossing, creates another level of chaos.

“When we have this kind of thing it creates a lot of different standards which are unsafe, because some vehicles stop too far up to the intersection, and some persons are crossing behind vehicles and that sort of a thing. So we need organisation, and that can be aided by those [road] marks,” he said.

Junction boxes, some of which are now all but erased, are also critical to preventing motorists from blocking intersections, he noted, while pointing out that with the new school year fast approaching it is time to repaint and paint new pedestrian crossings.

McKenzie said bad spots which are prone to fatal crashes must be highlighted with appropriate signs and markings. These include corridors in the greater Corporate Area, such as Marcus Garvey Drive, Spanish Town Road, Nelson Mandela Highway, Bustamante Highway in Clarendon, and Rose Hall main road in St James. “All those main roads we have had multiple crashes on them,” he said.

The absence of street lights on some corridors also pose a danger to even the most careful of drivers. The senior cop said where a corridor cannot be lighted, road studs (cats’ eyes) and dividing white lines are critical, as many roads which were not meant to be main thoroughfares are now serving as such, due to rapid expansion of dormitory communities across the island, and are now in need of these safety features.

“With the expansion and development of communities they are now heavily used, so the central dividing white lines are important for the dormitory communities. For example Portmore, where there is a lot of traffic and a lot of intersections,” he explained and pointed to roads in other areas such as Spanish Town and those leading to Golden Spring.

“Those have become heavily used roads and we believe that more signs are needed,” he said, noting that other jurisdictions which have excelled in road safety, such as The Netherlands and Sweden, heavily feature signs and markings.

“Their roads are like colouring books, there are a lot of marks and it makes sense, and it causes less conflict with law enforcement officers. So the signs and public education will make a lot of sense going forward.”

McKenzie said there are instances in which the police have to determine the distribution of a corridor on both sides, whenever there is a collision, for example, because the absence of markings means vehicles often encroach on each other’s space.

He explained: “Let’s say you’re travelling on a road such as St John’s Road, where there is no dividing line, or another road in similar condition, and there is a two-vehicle collision, the police will have to measure the width of the road [and] determine that the road is distributed equally, when sometimes, by virtue of the nature of the road, if it was marked, it may not even be distributed equally because of how the edging of the road is.”

These technicalities, he said, clearly indicate that it is best to have all roads properly marked.

Executive director of the NRSC Paula Fletcher pointed to a network of roads primarily on the North Coast, referred to as ‘white roads’, as among the noted corridors of concern which, she said, the NRSC had written to the National Works Agency (NWA) about, on behalf of the council chairman, Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

“Those roads, the material they were made with, is sort of smoothed out, so there is not enough traction, you don’t get the level of friction that you would on properly asphalted road. That is known. The NWA has informed us that they don’t have the kind of money that is required, and really they would have to be provided with the type of budget that would allow them to resurface that roadway,” she explained.

Fletcher said at last discussions with the NWA rehabilitation of those roads called for a budget of $24.6 billion, but the agency had only received a drop in the bucket of $128 million towards that project.

NWA head, EG Hunter has repeatedly, publicly, lamented the deficiency of funding for road rehabilitation across the island, and stressed that the works agency is doing the best that it can on its annual budget.

“This is not to say we mustn’t have personal responsibility, that’s a separate thing,” said Fletcher.

“We are talking at the level of the structures and institutions in a country where everybody has to come together. Of course, the Government has a big role to play, because a lot of us pay taxes and we should have safe roads, safe vehicles, be safe road users and have an effective emergency response system…the philosophy behind it is that all the stakeholders — Government, private sector, local communities — must work together to do all they can to have these four elements in place, and the extent to which you don’t spend what you should to make those things safe is the extent to which people will have crashes and get injured and die.”

Fletcher argued that if the entire apparatus is in place to support the safe systems approach — including the traffic ticketing system, the courts, legislation, public education, infrastructure, hospitals — it should minimise human errors behind the wheel.

She pointed to the massive disruption in the public health system to address the multiple trauma which result from road crashes.

“Everything is stopped — elective surgeries, if you need to have a breast amputation because you have cancer, or you have aneurysm and surgery needs to be done, everything is stopped — because they’re at the front gate. Everything has to be redirected. Even resources from neighbouring hospitals sometimes have to be moved. The capacity doesn’t increase,” Fletcher outlined.

She stressed that the money needs to be spent on the investment side of the problem, which would minimise crashes and the resulting fatalities and burden on the country: “You would have less people presenting at hospital. The money would have been spent on the other side of it.”

When contacted to speak on the issues, the NWA indicated that it was unable to provide any information until some time this week.

The NRSC has a parliamentary mandate to reduce road traffic injuries.

Between 1985 and 2021, a total of 13,487 people perished on the nation’s roads, with 2021 seeing the most road deaths (487) over those 36 years. The second highest number of deaths (444) was in 1991, followed by 440 in 2019.

According to the NRSC’s August 19 crash report, there were 305 deaths (two fewer than the similar period in 2021), from 267 crashes. As at August 17, motorcyclists accounted for the majority of those dead (82), followed by 67 private motor car drivers, and 44 were people who were passengers in those vehicles. Fifty-nine pedestrians, five public passenger vehicle (PPV) drivers, and 11 PPV passengers also lost their lives.