Ministry of Transport plans to reduce road traffic fatalities

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The Ministry of Transport continues to roll out its Road Safety Master Plan 2030. But it will need the cooperation of all line Ministries and Citizens for its sustainability.
Data compiled by the Ministry of Transport is showing that deaths on the Western Corridor have been reduced from 30 deaths per year to only nine. However, the Hon. Edmund Castro, Minister of Transport and NEMO believes that “If we lose one life that is one life too much.”
Chief Transport Officer Tirso Galvez believes that additional safety procedures can also save lives on the road. In his presentation at the NEMO Headquarters last week, Galvez reported that education and awareness, post crash response, capacity building to conduct enforcement (on a more frequent basis) is the way forward.
“We invite everyone to use good road safety practices, nurturing respect for other road users,” said Galvez.
Yvonne Hyde, Chair of the National Operation Committee, also took the opportunity to inform about the aims to continue the reduction of serious traffic related injuries and deaths. These fatalities can be reduced in accordance with the United Nations UN Decade of Action for road safety, which was passed at the UN General Assembly as resolution on March 2010. Such a resolution proclaimed 2011 to 2020 as the decade of action for road safety.
Belize began the mission to ensure that our road safety system considers the safe system approach and undergo improvements in accordance with the pillars of the safe system approach. Such an approach considers road safety management and post crash response a part of that road safety.
In 2010, Belize rose as an award winning Country to promote road safety for transformational change. “But this doesn’t mean that we have everything perfect. It means that we have tangible and intangible outputs and outcomes geared to improvement of safety behaviors in the long term,” said Yvonne S. Hyde, who is also the Chief Executive Officer within the Ministry of Economic Development.
According to CEO Hyde, there has been international interest in the Belize Road Safety Project and the lessons learned are being shared internationally. The traffic culture in Belize has been changing, but more effort is still required particularly in the area of traffic enforcement. It is not only building the road or providing the equipment it is a combination of education, health, enforcement and infrastructure, says Hyde.
A note from the Second Road Safety Project reminds us about some safety features that we can adopt while on the road. We can all not drink alcohol while driving, always wear a seatbelt and not get distracted whilst behind the wheel.
Because of forward momentum, the higher the speed of a vehicle, the greater the stopping distance that is required. For example, if a vehicle is moving at 30 miles per hour MPH towards a pedestrian, it needs 90 feet in brake time, at 40 MPH that distance increases to 120 feet, whilst at 50 MPH to a prodigious 190 feet –to prevent a fatality.