Group still pushing for start of breathalyzer testing

President of the Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA) Sharmane Roland Bowen is making yet another appeal to Government to start breathalyzer testing.

Roland-Bowen said it has been almost six weeks since she asked the Mia Amor Mottley-led administration in a press conference on April 7 to not delay the start of the testing, but has not received a written or verbal response from the authorities.

She told Barbados TODAY on Thursday that she was concerned that Crop Over 2022 will soon begin without the start of breathalyzer testing which has legislative approval.

The BRSA president stressed that breathalyzer testing is needed to determine the true cause of fatal accidents.

“We are not getting a response and it is getting closer to Crop Over. It seems as if they don’t intend to do anything and I really and truly see it as not enough. More needs to be done to get breathalyzer testing started. I am disappointed, and we got to call it for what it is. It seems to me as if they don’t care. It seems as though the authorities don’t care how many people are injured on the road, how many accidents there are, or how many deaths occur on our roads. We have a weapon that could help to reduce the possibility of accidents happening on the road by deterring persons from getting behind the wheel drunk, but it has not been put to use. It is just sitting on a shelf,” Roland-Bowen said.

On March 31, Attorney General Dale Marshall said Cabinet had agreed that now is not the time to proceed with the breathalyzer testing before metered taxi rates are implemented.

“To me it says a lot about how much we value the lives of our people, how much we value their health, how much we value their safety. We can’t want to value it in one way and then in another way don’t care what happens to them in something that could instantly take their life. Don’t care if you have a safe road design, and you got a drunk driver out there, the safe road design is no help. We want to make people safer on the road and the breathalyzer testing could help do that,” she said.
(AH)