The protection of life and property is the basic objective of policing, thus traffic safety should qualify as a key priority for police services. In many countries, more lives are lost on the road than through murder (see table); and road crashes are also a leading cause of destruction of motor vehicles, a rare possession and highly valued property in low-income countries (LICs). In reality, however, since few road crashes involve criminal intent, they have been traditionally viewed as ‘accidents’, and as a result, traffic safety is rarely a priority for the justice sector. Traffic safety can be seen to have become a priority in many roadside villages and urban communities in LICs, where, unable to escape the threat from traffic, residents have constructed illegal speed humps. In these situations, it should be possible for both the incidence and the impacts of road crashes to be reduced through improved collaboration between the police and the community. (Author/publisher)
Abstract