Tyrone Reid, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

ALMOST NINE of every 10 motorists on Jamaican roads break the speed limit! This was revealed by a recent Sunday Gleaner speed audit conducted at five strategic locations in the Kingston Metropolitan Region (KMR).

"It is not surprising ... based on the fact that I know what obtains on the road ... the majority of persons speed, and have scant regard for law and order," says Superintendent Claude Reynolds, head of the police Traffic Division.

The speed audit was conducted in collaboration with the Jamaica Constabulary Force's (JCF) Traffic Division and the National Road Safety Council (NRSC). Speed traps were set up along Marcus Garvey Drive, Norman Manley Boulevard, Mandela Highway, Sir Florizel Glasspole Highway and the Portmore leg of Highway 2000.

Chilling

Close to 350 of the 400 vehicles randomly gunned exceeded the speed limit; some more than doubled the allowable tolerance.

None of the drivers was ticketed; but, had they been, the Government's coffers would have swelled.

During the audit, a motorist was spotted overtaking a vehicle that was overtaking another vehicle on the two-lane Norman Manley Highway, better known as the Palisadoes Road, in Kingston. The driver was doing 93km per hour. The speed limit along the Palisadoes strip, the only access route to the Norman Manley International Airport by road, is 50km. The manoeuvre had danger written all over it.

The highest speed recorded during the audit was 180km per hour by a trailer travelling along the Mandela Highway.

Paula Fletcher, executive director of the NRSC, described the results of the audit as chilling. "It is very scary and it correlates with what we are seeing: that most crashes are caused by speeding." Fletcher is worried that fatalities on the nation's roadways might surpass the projected 300 mark in 2009.

"We are in danger of exceeding 300 fatalities for this year," she warned. While Fletcher believes the figures are scary, she was "not alarmed" by the findings "because it is a free for all out there".

Superintendent Reynolds, who along with Sergeant Winston Waugh, sub-officer in charge of the process office at the Elletson Road Traffic Division, argues that speeding is a symptom of the indiscipline plaguing Jamaica.

nabBING offenders

Meanwhile, Waugh, a 28-year JCF veteran, who has worked with traffic since he entered the force, told The Sunday Gleaner that it was virtually impossible to ticket every driver who broke the speed limit on a daily basis. Any effort to nab all the offenders would cause a major traffic jam, he added. While one driver is being pulled over by the cops, several more have a window of opportunity to speed by, and many do, he said.

"If you spend 10 minutes in any one area, and you can pick up 20, 30 or 50 persons going over the speed limit, that is saying something. But the problem is, how would we be able to prosecute? Manpower shortage is a problem, so you find that we have to take out the higher speed each time," the traffic cop explained.

Waugh pointed out that speeding was one of the top three traffic offences for which motorists are ticketed. The other two are tickets issued for not wearing seatbelts and not having child-restraint mechanisms.

As a practice, traffic cops, generally, do not flag a motorist for travelling 12 kilometres above the prescribed speed limit. However, he says, contrary to popular belief, this discretion applied by the police is done in the spirit of the law, because it is not legislated in the letter of the law.

"Discretion is not part of the law. We only use that to foster a relationship between us and the general public," he said, adding that a motorist could legally be ticketed for travelling a mere kilometre above the speed limit.

For the purpose of the study, any motorist travelling above the stipulated speed threshold in the designated areas was flagged for speeding.

Contrary to the belief that speed traps are set up by traffic cops to supplement their income, Waugh said it was done for one reason: to save lives. "It's not that we want to ticket you. We want to dissuade you from speeding. The most important factor is saving lives."

tyrone.reid@gleanerjm.com

Speed Audit Results - Motorists exceeding speed limit

Location - No of Cars - Speed Limit - Percentage