LTA helping make the media and printing presses rich.

The article below goes to show how poor the planning of National Road Safety Council (NRSC) and the LTA efforts are, when it comes to road safety. The "Arrive Alive" campaign run by the NRSC last year, was a total failure. More people died during the campaign in the first month of this year then in the years past.

The failure of such road safety campaigns stems from the fact that the campaigns are a simple rehash of whats been done in the past. It only serves to make the media and printing presses rich, whereas the actual message remains boring, obsolete and commanding.

This idea of the putting bilboards will only serve to make riches for the winners of the tender process.

What is really lacking on our roads, are proper signage. I regularly drive between Nadi and Suva and I see fair number of old worn out and broken road signs all over the place. Not to mention the need for new ones which can become better guidelines for motorists. It somehow never factors in the blame list when an accident occurs.

On the other hand, why is it even LTA's responsibility for enforcement of road rules. They are not responsible for the roads themselves, so why should act like they have the god given right to patrol and penalise all the happenings on the roads.

A point that I shall discuss later is the LTA's criteria for issuing drivers licences. They constantly blame the driver attitude for accidents. Perhaps they should consider how they've issued licences to drivers with bad attitude in the first place.

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Authority wants roadside signs - Fiji Times Online: "Authority wants roadside signs
(Monday, January 30, 2006)

THE Land Transport Authority of Fiji has decided to set up roadside billboards in an effort to remind drivers to follow road rules.

Authority acting chief executive Aptinko Vaurasi said a tender would be put out to contract a company to work on the billboards over the next few months.

'We have plans to put up billboards to pass on a good message. We need to put proper designs on them to capture the attention of drivers but it's a very sensitive issue because at the same time we don't want to distract drivers and let it affect their driving,' Mr Vaurasi said.

'We have to look at a way to send the message properly and so it needs to be done professionally.'

Mr Vaurasi said the billboards would carry LTA emergency hotline numbers that could be used to report illegal vehicles and drivers.

'We have been receiving a number of calls on these hotline numbers. They are against buses, taxi drivers, carriers and even private vehicles,' he said."

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