And while those are the road safety regulations, there's also a public safety dimension with motorcycles. This is the mode of transport often used by criminals to commit murders - with a rider at front and a gunman at the back as passenger. It makes for quick kills and quick escapes - and has sadly accounted for the loss of many lives and gunshot injuries to many more.
That's why CEO Chester also wants to ban pillion riding:
Chester Williams, CEO - Transport
"Certainly we are looking at, what Honduras did recently and, I saw the Honduras, move. And when I saw it, I sent it right away to, to the minister of home affairs. And I said to him, if you think that we should consider doing this in Belize, where Honduras have now banned the pillion rider. So on a motorcycle In Honduras only one person can ride."
"And again, it's because of the same thing where you have the rider, you have the pillion ride, the pillion rider is normally the gunman. So they did that move as a means of, safety, to try and quell some of the issues that they were having with, gun men, riding on motorcycles and go and perpetrate the criminal act."
"Again, we are also looking at other things, like, for example, the helmet that is worn by the rider and the pillion rider must bear the license plate number of the motorcycle. So again, we know that the helmet is good, but there is also the evil aspect behind the helmet, where the helmet is used by the gunmen to conceal their identity. So you conceal your identity, you will not be able to be recognized because of the helmet, you'll put this license plate on the helmet. So once you see the license plate on the helmet, we can know exactly who the cycle belong to because we will be able to trace this cycle through the license plate and the law is going to be clear, If you go down that road that you will not be allowed to loan your helmet to anybody. If you loan your helmet to anybody and they go and use it to commit a crime, the onus, the onus is then going to be on you to prove that you are not the gunman at that particular moment."
We note that according to the best information we could find, Honduras banned pillion riders in 2011.
