The proposal by the Barbados Road Safety Association to reduce the speed limit, has received the thumbs down from some Nation online readers.
Yesterday it was reported that President Sharmane Roland-Bowen said the current national speed limit of 60 kph should to be lowered to a maximum of 30 kph especially during school hours in the morning and evening.
She believes this would help reduce the number of accidents on the roads, noting that the speed limit was set at a time when there were not as many high powered vehicles on the roads.
This is what some our Facebook readers had to say.
Akobi Gill: “Driving at 30 kph is going to make road rage multiply ten fold on the roads”.
Peter Francis: “Frankly I’m tired of this approach by the Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA). Any problem they have, it seems they try to solve it by telling people to slow down. For example, there is a problem with crossings on the highways close to the roundabouts. At the roundabouts, there are five lanes the pedestrian has to walk across; five opportunities for the pedestrian to be hit. Instead of recommending walk-overs so the pedestrians would not impede traffic, the solution is to have the speed limits within a certain distance”.
Henderson Yarde: “That’s not really making any sense at all. Please come with a realistic solution that will help and stop trying to solve a problem by creating another problem. Traffic jams are already horrible. What does BRSA think is going to happen when you reduce speed limits to 30 mph in certain areas?”
Luka Alisia: “Talk about lowering residential speed limits, not the maximum limit for the entire country. However, three things that make this a tad pointless: A child getting hit at even at 10 km/hr would be awful depending on how he or she is hit. Those who are trusted with licences are trusted to be cautious and use commonsense while driving. The more reckless of us are still not going to abide by the speed limit in any case, and it’s most likely this group that’s causing the trouble, won’t change things much. Also, the question is, will the police enforce the new limit. Hopefully, attention would be brought to the need to drive more safely, which is really what is required, but I feel like this [proposal] would be more a nuisance than a solution”. (CM)
