Guyana has made significant strides in road safety, with a reported 20 percent decrease in fatal accidents and a 24 percent reduction in road fatalities compared to 2023.
Serious and minor accidents have also decreased by 2 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
The use of advanced technology, such as electronic speed meters and intelligent traffic cameras, has played a crucial role in these improvements.
Authorities issued over 42,000 speeding tickets in 2024, supported by an enhanced enforcement system, which saw a 37 percent increase in court cases compared to the previous year.
Public education campaigns have been instrumental, including 574 school lectures, 761 driver training programmes, and 211 bar safety talks. Defensive driving sessions and community outreach initiatives with religious and community leaders have also bolstered awareness.
Key interventions included the bolstering of bodycams for traffic officers, customised theoretical exams for new drivers, improvements to road infrastructure with traffic-calming measures, and the deployment of traffic light systems at key intersections.
These statistics were provided to media by President Dr Irfaan Ali on Tuesday during his End of Year Press conference.
Looking ahead, he said 2025 will bring the implementation of a demerit point system, full e-ticketing system, and additional measures like establishing concerned citizen WhatsApp groups for real-time traffic updates.
“We are looking to the implementation of the amendment of the Traffic Act, Chapter 551-02, with reference to use of intelligence traffic cameras. The target violations are attributed to speeding, failure to wear seatbelts, distracted driving and dangerous driving. And this is the full implementation of the e-ticketing system. And our e-ticketing system will be comparable to the best systems worldwide,” President Ali said.
He also said the government will introduce electronic speed meters along major roadways.
Meanwhile, in light of regional crime concerns, the Head of State said Guyana is strengthening its border security and citizen protection strategies. Plans include upgrading immigration systems with electronic gates for advanced entrant monitoring and expanding the Safe City initiative nationwide.
“The movement of gangs, the transfer of weapons, the expansion of gangs and we have to be mindful of this. So, what we have done in 2024 is expand the safe city project. We have state-of-the-art surveillance system in many of the important locations now, especially the urban centers. We have more than 500 bodycams now available to our officers who are fighting crime and also in traffic. We have invested in state-of-the-art drones.”
“So, the ‘Eye in the Sky’ programme has been very successful for us. I don’t know how many of you paid attention, but during the Christmas holidays, they were all over in the streets, giving back real time information and footage to the control centers to what is happening. We also launched a new programme where we have the citizens watch, where we have connected the surveillance CCTV cameras, the big screens outside Stabroek, for example, in key areas so that everybody can be looking at a screen and seeing what is happening in the streets and what is happening and identify potential threats.”
According to President Ali, these interventions brought “tremendous results”.
