NRSC urges Jamaica-wide drive to cut traffic deaths after mid-year briefing

Road crashes remain Jamaica’s second-highest source of violent death, hitting those aged 18 to 49 especially hard. National Road Safety Council (NRSC) chairman Dr Lucien Jones is pressing for a swift, joined-up national drive to reverse the toll and make the roads safer.

Speaking Tuesday (July 14) at a mid-2026 road-safety update held at the Office of the Police Commissioner in St. Andrew, Dr Jones said that age band is the island’s most productive group, so the deaths weigh heavily on national development.

He said more than 4,000 people died on Jamaican roads from 2016 to 2025, against more than 13,000 homicides over those years. While road deaths are down about 20 per cent so far in 2026 versus the same stretch of 2025, he said deeper cuts are still required and will need every citizen on board.

“While we give thanks to God Almighty first and all those who have contributed to the 20 per cent reduction in road fatalities…, we are mindful that last year, 2025, there was a whopping 42 per cent reduction in homicides compared to 2024. In 2025, there was a three per cent increase, not decrease, in road fatalities [relative to] 2024,” he said.

Dr Jones also reported that 220 children were killed in traffic crashes nationwide between 2016 and 2025.

“In addition to snuffing out the lives of our precious children, the reality is that the most productive age cohort accounted for 58 per cent of all road deaths,” he said.

“As the records show, in the same way that this entire nation… the ordinary man on the street, the working class, the trade unions, the professional class, the civil service, the universities, the Church, the media, the private sector, the Judiciary, and the Government, which includes the Opposition… have been mobilised to successfully drive down the crime rate, we declare that the reduction of road fatalities deserves the same kind of national effort,” the Chairman stated.

He said world bodies now treat road safety as a development challenge, a shift that helped place it among the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Holding to the Safe System model, he argued, remains essential.

“We have to approach it in a systematic fashion, otherwise we will fail. We have to have safe roads, we have to have safe road users, we have to have safe speeds, safe vehicles, and an efficient post-crash system.

“The [collective] will must be there. The legislative agenda must reflect the importance we attach to road safety. We have to have sustained levels of enforcement, training and retraining, public education… and international collaboration,” Dr Jones underscored.