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Road fatalities is a worrying trend- McLean
Guyana is supposed to half the number of road fatalities that occur by the year 2020, based on the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. But, instead, Guyana is faced with a worrying upward trend.
This is according to Major General (Retired) Norman McLean, Chairman of the Guyana National Road Safety Council, during a recent interview with this publication. He noted that accidents and incidents on the 
roadways are “getting from bad to worse.”
McLean believes that education, coupled with enforcement, is pertinent to reducing road fatalities. He emphasized that the four theoretical sessions offered by the Guyana Police Force’s Traffic Department as a prerequisite to getting a driver’s licence is inadequate. He does not recommend the driver’s package being more difficult but is adamant that continuous education should be a criterion for holding a driver’s licence.
McLean explained that during the first year of holding a driver’s licence, the individual should be required to attend classes to sharpen one’s knowledge of how to use the roadways.
“It is my view that the schools need to do a lot more road safety education programmes and our young people between the ages of 18 and 25 need to have intensive education programmes. Persons who want to drive must have intensive training programmes. They must be conscious of what their responsibilities are on the road,” he said.
He dismissed the notion expressed by many observers that there is a correlation between the increasing number of vehicles on the roadways and vehicular accidents that result in fatalities.
According to the Chairman, increasing traffic would result in traffic congestion and not road accidents. However, he will be conducting an analysis to determine the main contributing factors to road accidents and under what circumstances the persons become victims.
“The carnage of the roadway is very traumatic… There is the cost of hospitalization for the injured…and the recuperation period. All those things are costly and impacting negatively,” McLean said.
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