Latest update April 6th, 2025 11:06 AM
Latest News
- High Court bars GRA from seizing Team Mohamed’s luxury vehicles
- Oil spill will hit Guyana’s shores before capping stack arrives to plug leak
- UN says 100 children killed or injured in Gaza every day since war resumed
- Guyana received US$605M oil money in first quarter of 2025
- ‘Tariff war’ spells grave danger for the Region – CARICOM Chair Mottley
Drivers have a crucial role in road safety – says UK-based Expert
TRL Road Safety Expert, Mr. Darren Divall
The kerb drill – “Look right, look left, look right again and if the road is clear walk quickly across” – has for many years been a tactic promoted by the Guyana Police Force and Road Safety Organisations, together with the school system, to promote safe road use among school children.
But according to Road Safety Expert, Mr. Darren Divall, attached to the reputable United Kingdom-based Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), while pedestrians have their part to play, drivers have a crucial role as well, especially in the vicinity of pedestrian crossings.
Divall has for the past two years been the team leader attached to TRL which has been conducting a road safety programme for selected schools between Vreed-en-Hoop and Parika, as one of the five components of the ongoing US$46.8 million ‘West Coast Demerara Road Improvement’ project.
The project is being funded by the Caribbean Development Bank and executed by the Government, through the Ministries of Infrastructure and Education.
Divall pointed out during a recent interview with this publication that Guyana’s Road Traffic Code obliges all drivers to stop at pedestrians crossings to allow pedestrians to cross. But according to him, “we have experiences in the two years we have been doing trips to Guyana for this particular project, that that doesn’t happen very often.”
The team leader claimed to have observed pedestrians having to put themselves at risk to get drivers, of different types of vehicles, to stop for them in order to get across some roadways safely. But he reiterated that “in actual fact, the responsibility is on the drivers to stop. The responsibility is on the drivers, according to the Road Traffic Code”.
The team leader reflected on a case of absolute traffic lawlessness outside the Greenwich Park Primary School not so long ago.
“We were training some children to cross the road safely using the (pedestrian) crossing outside that school. And while doing that, vehicles from both directions stopped for us, but there was a minibus that overtook on one side of the road and went straight through the crossing,” Divall recounted.
He continued, “Now if that’s happening for us while we are in high visibility jackets and with big red stop signs trying to alert drivers that we are training people to become safer road users, then I might understand what it might be like for people who are living here permanently.”
Given the risky state of affairs that obtains on the roadways at times, Divall said that he has been making deliberate efforts to encourage adults, young people and children alike, to make sure that they only cross the roads when traffic has come to a halt.
In order to facilitate the school’s road safety programme, Divall and a team have made as many as seven trips here during the past two years to conduct stakeholders’ workshops and interactive sessions with both teachers and children. The most recent sessions were held last week.
The intent of the schools’ road safety programmes is to help the local education system to infuse road safety into the existing schools’ curriculum with a view to advancing efforts to promote the safe use of the roadways.
According to Divall, currently, the road fatality state of affairs in Guyana translates to two-thirds of all road deaths being pedestrians and vehicle occupants accounting for one-third.
He has linked the death of passengers to the existing seat belt laws.
“We don’t know for sure, but we suspect that the law relating to the use of seat belts in Guyana is a slight barrier to increase in road safety,” Divall recently explained.
He pointed out too that the situation that obtains here is that “if you are a driver or a front seat passenger, it is mandatory to wear it. If you are in the rear of the vehicle it isn’t; so that actually puts them (rear seat passengers) at risk, because they are not being restrained in the vehicle if there is an accident, and they could be thrown around in the vehicle hitting the metal frame, the windows or other passengers, or they’ve got the risk of being thrown out of the vehicle”.
And Divall revealed that three-quarters of the people who are thrown out of vehicles during an accident are killed. But of even more concern to him is the fact that evidence suggests that the road users at even higher risk of dying are pedestrians who are under the age of 17 (school age children).
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
This must not be our hour of humiliation
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- There are moments in the history of nations when fate lays before them a choice not of... more
The U.S. “Joining” the Commonwealth: an unreasonable expectation
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- Recent media stories have suggested that King Charles III could “invite” the United... more
Weekend Cartoon
