Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner WriterTHE POLICE are vowing to fully enforce the seat belt law this year, following the spate of car accidents in December, three of which took the lives of 18 people.
In all three instances, the vehicles were overloaded.
Senior Superintendent Elon Powell, head of the Traffic Depart-ment, is adamant that, effective immediately, the police will be insisting that seat belts be worn, not only in the front seat, but in the back seats of cars as well.
"We see an urgent need to protect the people from themselves and we are going to enforce all the laws that can aid in the safety of people: seat belts in the back seat of public and private vehicles; no overloading of vehicles; and no speeding," Supt. Powell told The Gleaner.
It was in response to lobbying by route taxi operators and some public pressure that the Patterson administration relented on its commitment to an immediate full implementation of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Act, passed by the House of Representatives on March 3, 1999, and the Senate on March 19. The police were, therefore, asked not to immediately enforce the seat belt requirement for the back seat of cars, but to concentrate instead on the front seat and on the wearing of crash helmets by motorcyclists.
HUGE OUTCRY
It was a decision that did not sit well with Dr. Lucien Jones, deputy chairman of the National Road Safety Council.
"When the legislation was introduced, it had both seat belt and car seat protection for children and crash helmet requirements. But there was a huge outcry about people travelling with children not being able to afford child protection devices and taxis not being able to carry enough passengers and, hence, would charge more," Jones recalled.
This led to a review of the situation by the Road Safety Council, which, he said, "reluctantly" went along with a request by the government to hold back on implementation of the more contentious requirements of the law, pending the carrying out of a public information programme.
LAMENTATIONS
Now Jones is signalling that the council "has every intention of lobbying for full implementation." Recalling the details of all three car accidents in December, Jones argued that in all three cases the legislation could have helped to prevent these fatalities.
"If they knew that they would have been prosecuted, they would have desisted from packing the cars, which would have lessened the likelihood of the accidents taking place and certainly there would not have been so many persons in the vehicles, anyway," he argued.
Furthermore, according to Jones, "The argument that having a seat belt in the back seat is not as important as having it in the front seat is not supported by the evidence."
Reflecting on the spike in the number of road deaths over the holiday period, Superintendent Powell admitted to The Sunday Gleaner that he was devastated.
"I felt as if I had failed because these deaths took place despite the fact that we had done so many things to minimise accidents," he lamented. "We increased our deployments; we tried to monitor those areas that had been notorious for fatal accidents, yet we had so many deaths."
Supt. Powell's lamentations belie the fact that there have been fewer accidents and deaths in 2004 than the previous year.
Up to December 30, the country had recorded 296 fatal accidents in which 346 people died. These figures represent an improvement over the 354 accidents and 391 deaths recorded over the similar period the year before.
