And with vehicular fatalities on the rise, the COMPOL is making a point of reducing the lives that are lost by careless driving.
It's a plan that comes on the heels of unnecessary vehicular deaths, two that occurred over the weekend, as well as the tragic incidents that took the lives of 51-year-old Kimberley Griffith, 40-year-old Tifara Samuels Hall, and 10 month old Abdur Smith, among others.
Now the commissioner says he will ensure that the highways are better policed.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"This morning I'm meeting with my commanders from across the country, all the regional formational divisional precinct commanders and one of the reasons for our meeting today is to address the increase in accidents across the contrary. It has become of serious concern and we think that we have to re-strategize our effort to see how we can address these unfortunate situations. But at the end of the day, I also want to appeal to motorists - no matter what we do as a department, we will not be able to stop these accidents if the motorists do not play their role. Motorists, drivers need to learn to be more careful in the use of the highway and we must have due consideration for other road users. We have incidents with motorcycles, often times we see motorcycles overtaking on the wrong side; sometimes, motorcycle riders believe that the rules of the road do not apply to them. And so we need to see what can be done to sensitize them. So we will be doing a sensitization campaign, utilizing highway patrols, random checkpoints in different parts of the highways and we will also be partnering with national traffic to see if they can join us on this campaign. Like I said, it must be addressed."
"Each formation should have a highway patrol and so that is the directive I have given today that I want to see that with immediate effect that you do highway patrol within your jurisdiction and then the other jurisdiction next to you pick up from where you end and move to the other location, so that's what we're going to do."
