Seatbelts Will be Required in the City

The time is fast approaching when Commissioner of Police Chester Williams transitions to C.E.O. of the Ministry of Transport. For years, the Belize Police Department has been trying to crack down on traffic laws to create safer roads and minimize fatal accidents. According to William’s this is work that he plans to continue at his new post. He also showed his support for the government’s decision to tighten seatbelt laws within the city. Here’s what he had to say.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“I have seen a number of issues in the transport industry. A number of issues as it relates to the use of our roads, and these are issues that certainly would need to be addressed. I have been in dialogue with my future minister, Mr. Minister Zabaneh in terms of looking at some of the things that we want to see done within the transport ministry, and certainly road safety is a priority. I’m not going to go into details at this time in terms of what my plans will be because I believe that I would need to sit down with the chief transport officer or that is and his deputy, as well as to meet with the persons who are in charge of DOT across the country and get their input, get feedbacks from them. And based on that, they will put together a plan of action that is going to be implemented to make our highway safer. I will leave it at that for now, and when I fully takes over my new office, then we can have an entire dialogue on what the plan is going to be moving forward. The seatbelt issue  is something that cabinet have agreed to and it came into law and I think that it was considered for good reasons. One might say why you seatbelt in a city when in fact you, cannot drive at a very high speed within city limits. But that is not true. I’m sure that you have seen every day vehicles within city limits driving at extremely high speed driving reckless, and we have had a number of fatal traffic accidents in the city where we believe that had the victims been wearing seatbelt when those accidents occurred, they may be alive today. So I do believe that it was done in good sense, one and two, it was also done to ensure that we safeguard the lives of our people as best as we possibly can.”