ROAD accidents, and more particularly, fatal and serious ones, are  major concerns in many countries and the number of vehicles on our roadways continues to grow at a rapid rate and traffic in general has become much more hectic.
Governments and police departments in many countries are struggling and having headaches in coping and finding solutions to the increasing traffic woes.
What is even more worrisome is that traffic accidents are more prevalent in the developing world, which already has so many other socio-economic difficulties.
Owing to the global and massive scale of the issue, with predictions that by 2020 road-traffic deaths and injuries will exceed HIV/AIDS as a burden of death and disability, the United Nations and its subsidiary bodies have passed resolutions and held conferences on the issue. The first United Nations General Assembly resolution and debate was in 2003. The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims was declared in 2005. In 2009, the first high-level ministerial conference on road safety was held in Moscow.
The World Health Organisation, a specialised agency of the United Nations Organisation, in its Global Status Report on Road Safety 2009, states that over 90% of the world’s fatalities on the roads occur in low-income and middle-income countries, which have only 48% of the world’s registered vehicles, and predicts that road traffic injuries will rise to become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030.
Worldwide, it was estimated in 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed (2.2% of all deaths) and 50 million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions. India recorded 105,000 traffic deaths in a year, followed by China with over 96,000 deaths. This makes motor vehicle collisions the leading cause of injury death among children worldwide 10 – 19 years old (260,000 children die a year, 10 million are injured) and the sixth leading preventable cause of death in the United States (45,800 people died and 2.4 million were injured in 2005). In Canada they are the cause of 48% of severe injuries.
Here in Guyana it is common knowledge that road fatalities and  serious injuries are a grave concern and worse yet the situation never seems to improve significantly.
With a population of less than one million we have one of the highest per capita rate of road accidents/serious injuries/deaths in the world.
For this year already we have had 31 road fatalities, admittedly nine less than last year for the same period. But this is still much too high for a country such as ours.
In fact, the situation has become so critical it has prompted Home Affairs Minister, Clement Rohee, to issue a public appeal reminding road users of the need for greater caution
“While we can take some amount of comfort in the declining statistics on traffic deaths for a specific period, we are saddened by the reports of lives lost on our roads through reckless driving by some drivers, and the careless use of our roads by some motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians. We take this opportunity to remind all road users that safety is a shared responsibility; and as such, the Ministry of Home Affairs encourages all categories of road users to exercise utmost caution when using the roads,” Rohee urged.
While we are fully aware of the problem, what is even more important is that we find lasting solutions and to do this we have to unearth the underlying reasons and causes for the high rate of traffic accidents.
In this regard, we already know that speeding and drunken driving are two of the major causes of serious accidents and therefore we need to find ways and means to deal effectively with these two factors.
However, other factors such as inadequate networks to meet the burgeoning number of vehicles on our roads and a reckless and  lawless driving culture need to be addressed. The latter of course is a microcosm of the larger breakdown of law and order in our society, consequently, a comprehensive approach is imperative.