Road Safety Month Activities Targeted at Young Male Drivers

June is being observed as Road Safety Month and during the period, focus will be placed re-educating young male drivers about the road code and to encourage them to behave responsibly on the nation’s roadways.
Special training in road safety would also be provided for them, Janet Peters, ducation/Information Officer attached to the Road Safety Unit, has informed.
She noted that the Unit was aiming to implement a year-long road safety programme, but for this month, which is being observed under the theme, ‘With Awesome Power Comes Greater Responsibility’, young male drivers were being targeted, “because statistically, they are most often involved in accidents and therefore most often contribute to fatalities on the road.” The Unit has collaborated with the Jamaica Gasoline Retailers Association (JGRA), the Ministry of Transport and Works, the National Road Safety Council and Police Traffic Headquarters to devise strategies and activities to take the message of road safety to all motorists in general and young motorists in particular.
Some of the strategies to be employed to get the message across include a comprehensive mass media campaign, which would involve among other things, a newspaper supplement, public service announcements, jingles and advertisements.
“We have a tag-line for our activities, which is ‘Fools Speed Ahead’, because we recognise that speed is the factor in most accidents. So, we will be developing a number of advertisements around this theme to target the young drivers,” Ms. Peters informed JIS News.
In addition to the media campaign, defensive driving seminars will be conducted.
“There is one scheduled for June 15 at Petrojam, which will be conducted by the Police Traffic Division along with persons from the JGRA. There are also seminars scheduled for as far ahead as October,” she continued.
The Road Safety Unit will also be conducting road safety seminars throughout this month and the rest of the year. According to Ms. Peters, arrangements were being made to have these seminars around the island.”The seminars will be targeting the UWI (University of the West Indies) students, because they are essentially the age group that we are trying to reach,” she said.
On Sunday, June 5, a church service will be held at the Mandeville Baptist Church to kick off the month’s activities, while there will be an official launch on Wednesday, June 8 at the PetCom Service Station in Braeton, Portmore. The newspaper supplement will be published on Sunday, June 26 in the Sunday Gleaner and Sunday Observer newspapers.