Road accidents that are claiming lives demand constant reviewing. We have had more than our quota of dead and injured. The issue is a major preoccupation of IMF & WHO. They warn, in a 217-page report that, if not tackled by 2012, accidents will become the third major killer.

This paper pinpoints some more local black spots and deficiencies and draws also from the document World Report on Road traffic accident injury prevention, April 2004. In Mauritius, effective thought has not been given to the multifaceted issues leading to avoidable deaths, infirmities and wreckage, even after warnings were given.

Let us make a quick inventory of our roads and traffic load. That we have a road-based conveyance system must be stressed continuously. This network was set up more than 50 years ago and catered for less than half of today’s population. There was no tourism, only sugar production with railways helping until 1956.

Today the population has more than doubled: 700,000 tourists, a diversified economy, 500,000 tons of sugar processed from millions of tons of raw sugarcane; lots of cash leading to a high population and vehicle ratio on a limited land area; daytime work culture and concentration of offices and businesses in the city.

All this has created bedlam and congestion as commuters compete for scarce travel space. Our roads have remained practically the same except for the new trunk roads. In such a set-up, the small acts of carelessness by any user can and do lead to disasters. Some haphazard traffic hindrances: hedges invading roads, specially at junctions, road signs masked by branches; even traffic lights by sugar cane. Why can’t municipalities and district councils enforce order there?

Loud radio playing drowning the driver’s listening faculty; badly set up traffic humps, too high and clumsy and with abrupt edges, wreck vehicles and owners’ purses. In our tiny set-up, do we really need powerful cars? Can our size and traffic density sustain a 100-km speed as projected? That would be an incentive and legal basis to kill more people.

Why is tax not removed or reduced on spare parts and tyres to promote vehicle fitness ? Generally rear lights and reflectors of heavy vehicles are very small; they are often causes of fatal accidents on collision from the rear. Why not plug gaps at the rear of lorries and buses to reduce those dangerous mobile guillotines?

We are still using primitive implements such as iron bars, hammers, levers to free victims from crashed vehicles. Power cutters, manned by emergency teams, can do the job in a jiffy. How safe is the Port area with inflammable industries, petrol reservoirs and thousands of personnel? Are there contingency plans for rapid evacuation and access of rescuers? Are they tested regularly to ascertain response time of rescue parties, mode and means of evacuation ?

Reaching accident sites being problematic, aggressive and continuous first-aid courses should be imparted to targeted volunteers for use while waiting for the SAMU?

Drivers, inconvenienced by full lights of oncoming vehicles at night and the other party not dimming his lights, need not be distressed nor insist; they must simply look to the left of the road with the corner of their eyes for better vision and orientation.

As of now, victims of hit and run get no insurance and it is tragic. Why not legislate for insurance companies to set up a fund to adequately compensate such victims?

<B>Aim of report</B>

The report places prominence on collaboration of the police, the university, the ministry of Health. Seemingly Health has no role, except standing by to receive human wreckage and corpses. If the university is researching, this is belied in reality. At least three killer spots have remained uncorrected for three or four decades: Pailles NTR (since 1964) (b) Meldrum bend at Beau-Bassin, and (c) Olivia.

On page 7, the report bans the word accident connoting inevitability and replaces it by crash predictable and preventable. In this vein, the statement la route tue is a dangerous fallacy and sheer scapegoating. It is the human agency that, by its excesses, piles up corpses upon the inert and subservient road surface and has the cheek to blame it. The following defects come to mind: non-retractable external mirror, no rear headrest, no rear seat belt and others, on which authorities might insist (in some makes of cars).

Some practical points from the report </B>