Death on Guyana’s roadways

Mar 23, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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Monday’s colourful and joyful Phagwah celebrations were marred by a sad series of road accidents. Crashes occurred at Industry, East Coast Demerara; Vlissengen Road and Station Street, Kitty in Georgetown and Meten-meer-Zorg on the West Coast Demerara. The worst case was the accident in which a young man died at Houston on the East Bank Demerara.
Phagwah Day’s accident increased the road fatality total to 25 so far in 2014, one more than the corresponding period in 2013. Nine pedestrians, six motorcyclists and six passengers in motor vehicles have been among the dead. Speeding caused 13 deaths and drunken driving caused two.
Guyana continues to maintain a rough average of about a dozen road deaths every month. Thousands more have suffered injuries or lost limbs. Traffic accidents are among the top ten causes of death and account for the greatest number of disabilities. Survivors have suffered untold disabilities and lifelong injuries. Victims have lost earnings and spent uncounted amounts on hospitalization.
The road safety problem, as the records prove, has been aggravated by the fact that ‘new’ vehicles are being added to the roads at an increasing rate, estimated at about 1,000 per month. Too many vehicles travel too fast and far too few traffic policemen are deployed on the rural roadways where and when speeding is rampant, both by day and night.
Former Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy had sounded the alarm years ago over the high rate of road deaths and the soaring costs of medical treatment of the victims of road accidents. With a death rate from road accidents of 21.8 per 100,000 of the population for 2006, Guyana maintained its unenviable rank of fifth place among countries in the Americas for traffic accident-related deaths.
Ramsammy had disclosed then that, of the 6,000-odd deaths Guyana experiences every year, road accidents are the seventh leading cause. He estimated that the cost of care for accident victims amounted annually to more than $100M at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation alone. He complained that an average of 18 road accident victims received surgery every week.
PAHO estimated the economic cost of road deaths and injuries at $552.6 million in year 2000. PAHO reported that about one Guyanese is killed on the roads every 48 hours. Half of the victims were pedestrians, most of whom were working-age adults 20-54 years old and about a quarter were school-age children, 3-17 years old. When the loss of employment and productivity and partial or permanent disability are considered, road accidents cost the country more than $500M per year. When expenses for vehicle repairs and replacements are computed, the costs easily add up to about $1B per year or more than 1.5 per cent of the national budget.
The reasons for the rate of deaths on rural public roads are not difficult to discern. These roads run through heavily-populated villages, but are often unlit at night. Most have no sidewalks and the verges are stony, muddy or encumbered by vendors’ stalls thus forcing bicyclists and pedestrians onto the motorways. There they must compete with cars, horse-drawn carts, motorcycles, stray dogs, farm animals, parked or broken-down vehicles and piles of sand or mud.
The biggest contributory factor to fatalities, perhaps, has been drivers’ dangerous driving habits. Some, especially drivers of commercial vehicles and minibuses, simply do not have the skill, experience or temperament to be entrusted with responsibility for human lives on public roads.
Many drive defective or overloaded vehicles recklessly or at unsafe speeds and display aggressive behaviour and poor road discipline. Too many vehicles travel too fast, and far too few traffic policemen are deployed on the rural roadways where and when speeding is rampant, both by day and night.  Fatalities on the roads, therefore, can fit into a fairly clear framework:
–    First, many occur at night, on weekends or on holidays and on open stretches of country road. High-risk rural areas, however, seem to attract low-level attention from the traffic police.
–    Second, it is quite evident that there are many unqualified and incompetent drivers who are not fit to drive taxis and buses.
–    Third, a large number of accidents can be blamed on persons driving under the influence of alcohol and speeding.
–    Fourth, the Police Force does not possess sufficient special equipment to determine cases of speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol.
–    Fifth, there are insufficient competent personnel to certify the roadworthiness of the growing number of private and commercial vehicles.
An independent Commission of Inquiry is clearly needed to investigate road traffic accidents and to make recommendations for saving lives.  The Ministry of Home Affairs and the Guyana Police Force have a lot more work to do to make our roads safe for our citizens.

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