Paula Fletcher, the executive director of the National Road Safety Council (NRSC), is right to be concerned about the number of fatal traffic collisions in Jamaica, and wanting to try new things to deal with the problem.

We all know that these collisions and their aftermath are economically and emotionally expensive. When 343 people die as a result of collisions, that is not merely a statistic. And in so far that it is a static, it doesn't paint the full picture.

For instance, for each person who dies, multiples are injured, sometimes seriously. And often, those who die are either seriously incapacitated or drop out of the workforce at their productive peak. They usually leave children and other dependants, who then have to make major economic, social and emotional adjustments to their lives. That is of itself traumatic.

There have been, in so far as we are aware, no recent studies of the cost to the national economy of road collisions and the resulting injuries and fatalities. But it is a cost to the economy when skilled and productively employed persons are removed from the workforce, either permanently or for extended periods. The analyses to bring us close to verifiable figures should be part of the remit of the NRSC.

Indeed, these findings, plus the known costs for treating vehicle trauma in hospital, the cost of vehicle repair and replacement and of attending to the welfare of dependants, would help policymakers to determine the opportunity cost of investment in road safety and road-safety campaigns.

Our larger point, therefore, is that while we appreciate the plan for the use of electronic surveillance equipment to traffic offenders - indeed, we believe that CCTV could be employed more broadly for crime monitoring - these projects should be grounded in deeper analyses of the economy and collisions

Basic problems

It is imperative, too, to fix the other more basic problems in the systems, such as how an illiterate or semi-literate person can obtain a driver's licence, and when he or she has to demonstrate both technical and literacy competence at the driving exam.

Or, how, for instance, is it possible for, say, a route taxi to disobey all the traffic rules at a key transportation hub in the presence of law and other enforcement officials?

And what of the plans to overhaul the Island Traffic Authority, including the divestment of many of its functions to the private sector?

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