One would think, after the inauguration of the group and the campaign it launched to appeal for caution, care, concern, consideration and commonsense in the use of our roads, that there wouldn’t have been need for these women to continue to sacrifice pressing schedules to bring home to Guyanese the realities of road accident trauma.

Well, that’s not the case. After lobbying for traffic law reform and seeing Government hold public forums on the issue and passing new road safety legislation, road usage continues to worry us all.

Only last night, as we were going to press, we heard of a fatal road accident in Church Street.

At a time when Mothers In Black is implementing a third anniversary programme, that accident is a saddening occurrence.

In the years that it came into being, Mothers In Black must have learned, like many of us, that accident reduction is an ideal at best. Still, if anything, the rising death toll has brought Mothers In Black’s “stop-the-road-carnage” crusade into sharper focus. There clearly is a need for government to strictly enforce the country’s road usage laws in order to effect traffic control and accident reduction. The Ministry of Home Affairs must facilitate the establishment or revival of road safety associations in urban, sub-urban and rural areas and road safety patrols in schools. These associations should be encouraged to institutionalize seminars, accompanied by photographic exhibits of local and foreign road accidents, in a bid to assure widespread awareness of auto traffic as a dangerous killer.

Traffic lights automatically regulate the flow and direction of traffic on busy and badly congested streets. But traffic police should be used in addition.

We don’t have to be reminded that enforcing traffic laws is unpopular police work, because few people look upon traffic law violators as the criminal they really are. Especially when it comes to speeding, the temptation for drivers to edge above the speed limit is always great, and many commuters relish speed driving. But the police officer who signals a violator to stop or slow down may actually be saving the latter’s or someone else’s life. It goes without saying, then, that strict but fair enforcement of traffic laws greatly reduces traffic accidents.

In the final analysis, nothing that the police do can take the place of skilful, alert and cautious drivers, and of all road users generally having a better understanding of and addressing the traffic problem.

That’s why we should support, rather than spurn, efforts by the Police to enforce seat belt usage and other road traffic measures.