CHAIRMAN of the National Road Safety Council (NRSC) Dr Lucien Jones has reiterated his call for an urgent, coordinated national response to improve safety on the nation’s roads.

Addressing a media briefing on Jamaica’s road safety performance at the midpoint of 2026 at the Office of the Police Commissioner in St Andrew on Tuesday, Jones pointed out that road fatalities rank as the country’s second-leading cause of violent deaths, particularly among persons aged 18 to 49,

He noted that this demographic represents the country’s most productive segment, making these losses a significant impediment to national development.

Jones further noted that more than 4,000 lives were lost on the nation’s roads between 2016 and 2025, compared with more than 13,000 homicides recorded over the same period.

In acknowledging a 20 per cent decline in road fatalities, so far this year compared with the corresponding period in 2025, Jones stressed that further reductions are needed and underscored that achieving this will require the collective commitment and cooperation of all citizens.

“While we give thanks to God Almighty first and all those who have contributed to the 20 per cent reduction in road fatalities… we are mindful that last year, 2025, there was a whopping 42 per cent reduction in homicides compared to 2024. In 2025, there was a three per cent increase, not decrease, in road fatalities [relative to] 2024,” he said.

Jones told the briefing that 220 children lost their lives in road crashes across the country between 2016 and 2025.

“In addition to snuffing out the lives of our precious children, the reality is that the most productive age cohort accounted for 58 per cent of all road deaths,” he said.

“As the records show, in the same way that this entire nation — the ordinary man on the street, the working class, the trade unions, the professional class, the civil service, the universities, the Church, the media, the private sector, the judiciary, and the Government, which includes the Opposition — have been mobilised to successfully drive down the crime rate, we declare that the reduction of road fatalities deserves the same kind of national effort,” Jones said.

He emphasised that adopting the safe system approach to road safety remains paramount.

“We have to approach it in a systematic fashion, otherwise we will fail. We have to have safe roads, we have to have safe road users, we have to have safe speeds, safe vehicles, and an efficient post-crash system.

“The [collective] will must be there. The legislative agenda must reflect the importance we attach to road safety. We have to have sustained levels of enforcement, training and retraining, public education… and international collaboration,” added Jones.

Data from the Island Traffic Authority show that up to Tuesday, 163 people had lost their lives in 148 fatal crashes on the roads since the start of the year.

This represented a 19 per cent decline in road fatalities when compared to prior year while fatal crashes decreased by 16 per cent.

— JIS