WASHINGTON, DC, USA (CMC) — Jamaica is part of an initiative to promote
the implementation of best practices in road safety data collection in
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) says Jamaica has joined forces
with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's
(OECD) International Transport Forum (ITF) and the United Kingdom to
promote the initiative.
It said that a key component of the IDB's Road Safety Strategy for LAC
is to support countries in the strengthening of their institutional and
technical capacities in road safety via knowledge sharing.
The goal of this effort, referred to as twinning, is to help Jamaica
align its road safety data collection to international standards.
"This is an important step towards the development and implementation of
effective road safety policies, recommended by ITF's International
Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD)," said the IDB, noting
that currently, road deaths in the Caribbean are high, with 20 per
100,000 habitants compared to the rest of the region, which is on
average 17 deaths per 100,000 habitants.
The Road Safety Unit of Jamaica's Ministry of Transport, Works and
Housing is seen as a pioneer, leading the way on road crash data
collection in the Caribbean. Once the project is complete, Jamaica plans
to share best practices and knowledge learned in the programme with
other countries in the Caribbean, the IDB added.
It said the first module of the twinning initiative is currently being
executed by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) on behalf of the
United Kingdom Government and has the financial support and of IDB. The
main components involve a comprehensive review of how data relevant for
road safety analyses are currently collected, stored and analysed in
Jamaica, and how they are then used to influence road safety strategies
and interventions.
Recently, more than 70 delegates from six Caribbean countries —
Barbados, The Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Belize and Guyana —
participated in a one-day workshop organised by the IDB to review the
project.
The IDB said participants were presented with crash data systems and
taught how to develop evidence-led road safety policies to reduce road
deaths and the economic impact this involves.
The ITF, IDB and the Jamaican and UK government initiative is part of
the organsations' commitment to the United Nation's Decade of Action for
Road Safety, which aims to stabilise and reduce the number of global
road fatalities by 2020.
"Currently, 1.3 million people die each year on the world's roads and
approximately 50 million suffer non-fatal injuries," the IDB said.
Source: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Jamaica-in-joint-initiative-on-road-crash-data-collection_14049894