Jones wants cops to tackle reckless drivers like criminals
Published:Tuesday | July 8, 2025 | 12:11 AMAdrian Frater/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Dr Lucien Jones, the vice-chairman of the National Road Safety Council (NRSC), wants the police to treat reckless drivers with the same urgency and seriousness as violent criminals.
Speaking against the background of Sunday morning’s crash along the Salt Marsh main road in Trelawny, which claimed the lives of five partygoers who were travelling from Spanish Town, St Catherine, to a party in Hanover, and for which the police blamed speeding, Jones said the time to get tough is now.
“This accident brings into sharp focus the need for the entire country to be mobilised to deal with this serious national problem. One hundred and ninety-four persons have now died on our roads [since the start of 2025], which is four per cent – just four per cent – less than the 203 for last year,” said Jones. “So not only, once again, has the nation been plunged into grief, but even more importantly, even more intimately, communities, many communities are now in grieving because of this crash.”
“There are basically three things that we can do to make sure that people slow down. One is public education, the other one is training, and the third one is sanctions,” continued Jones. “By far, the most important one is sanctions. Sanctions that when you go above the speed limit, you get a ticket and pay a hefty fine. If it attracts demerit points, then you can stand to lose your licence or have your licence suspended, at the very least.”
In actively dealing with all the three listed areas simultaneously, Jones said special attention should be paid to people driving under the influence of alcohol,
“We need to deal with all three issues concurrently, but the most important one is sanctions. When drivers go on the road, they need to understand very clearly that if they drive above the speed limit, there are consequences, and the consequences will be swift, and the consequences will be harsh,” noted Jones. “You don’t want to wait until somebody is injured or somebody has died for that to have any effect on anybody at all.”
As it relates the ‘speed vaccine’ advance by the WHO, Jones said that if a way could be found to properly use that approach, it could go a long way in addressing the problem.
“Is there a way we can use the speed vaccine to effect the same kind of dramatic decline in murder, the 40 per cent drop that the police have been able to do since the start of the year? The answer is yes,” said Jones.
“If we focus, upgrade, improve efficiency of the breathalyzer system, the demerit point system, the use of cameras to detect and to send out ticket, the use of detecting average speed over distance, and all the equipment that the police have to detect speeding, then we can make a difference, a big difference. So we wait and see for these measures to be implemented, and for the improvements to take place,” he said.