Transport Ministry to Enforce Harsher Penalties Amid Highway Deaths

Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Transportation, Chester Williams, announced over the weekend that strict highway enforcement and stiffer penalties for infractions will be imposed shortly.  His remarks came on the heels of several highway collisions and incidents that occurred over the weekend.  As we reported earlier, a recent data report shows that motorcycles are at the forefront of many of these incidents.  According to Williams, despite the news reports, the recklessness of young drivers continues unabated.

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport: “While we look at more stricter enforcement that is also not going to help alleviate the problem completely. And while we looked at training of our officers that too is still not going to help to alleviate totally. So putting everything we’re doing at this time, the amendment to the laws, the stricter enforcement, we still have to make sure that we do more sensitization, particularly among our younger population, because there needs to be an attitude change that group of persons to let them come to the realization that driving or riding a motorcycle is dangerous and whilst you might feel or seem like fun at the moment, it can become very deadly easily. There is a lot that we are trying to do from a ministry standpoint in terms of looking at stricter laws particularly to regulate the issue of motorcycles because we’re seeing that majority of these accidents do involve the use of motorcycles. And I found it very strange to see how two motorcycles going in opposite direction can have a head on collision, very, very strange. And what is even more concerning is that every day we’re reading of these accidents on the news. We’re seeing it playing out. The news media has been extremely graphic in putting out the effect of these accidents and despite that we’re still seeing that our young people are not taking heed. They continue in the reckless manner in which they maneuver motorcycles on our highways.”

CEO Williams says they are looking at measures taken in Jamaica as a template to curb motorcycle accidents.  

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport: “We’re also working with the Standard of Bureau to see how we can legislate safer helmets as our standard helmets to be used in Belize. We are looking at three different types of helmets and we’re copying what Jamaica has done. Because this issue of motorcycle do not only exist in Belize, it’s all over the world. And it is extremely prevalent within the Caribbean countries. I think what we have here is nothing compared to some of the Caribbean countries around us, but that is still not to say that we must just leave it as it is. We still need to do our best to see how we can save our young people. So there’s a lot that we are doing. We anxiously anticipate the next House setting where these amendments should be presented and pass and hopefully by the beginning of January next year we should have new legislation governing the use of motorcycles and highways and while we are focusing more on motorcycles we also have to take note of the fact that there are instances where drivers of vehicles are the problem so we don’t want to throw out the blame on motorcycles but also to let drivers understand that they need to give motorcycles their rightful place on the highways.”

We will have more from CEO Williams in tomorrow’s newscast./