Sobriety tests at the scenes of accidents will be introduced in the upcoming session of Parliament, while speed camera legislation is likely to be tabled in the subsequent session, Transport Minister Shawn Crockwell told yesterday’s road safety summit.

However, having random roadside checks is still a matter under discussion. While lowering the legal limit or introducing “zero tolerance” has been discussed, Mr Crockwell said that there were issues with hospitality and tourism that had also been lobbied to the Bermuda Government.

“It was looked at, but there were consequences,” he said.

Road safety speaker Dr Joseph Froncioni has also said the Island “absolutely” needs an alcohol bureau of control.

At present, one person is in charge of checking roughly 600 liquor-licensed premises, he said.

Dr Froncioni added that blood alcohol testing for people admitted to hospital needs to be stepped up and called for an extensive system of personnel continuously on call to take forensic blood samples, rather than relying on the use of police doctors. He said that in the vast majority of cases under the present system, persons admitted to hospital for road injuries and who are clearly intoxicated are never checked for alcohol.

Offering an overview of the decline in road safety, Dr Froncioni pointed to 1996 as the definitive year, when the Island’s motorcycle police squad was drastically cut.

“We take the cops off the road, and since 1996 there is a linear regression line — although collisions have gone down, our deaths have steadily gone up,” he said.

“It was a scary year in 2014, and we don’t expect that to change.”

Bucking popular assumptions, Dr Froncioni said he wanted to “dispel the misconception that it’s not young people”. Motorists aged 16 “get hurt more than anybody else”, he said, pointing to the need for far more effective drivers’ education. Road speeds have also soared since the mid-1990s, leading to faster and more reckless overtakes — and significantly more serious injuries in collisions, exacting an “incalculable” toll on the Island’s healthcare system. For every fatality, there are 215 injuries.

In the short term, he said: “We need speed calming measures, and we need strong, effective deterrents to drinking and driving. If we were able to magically alcohol test everybody on the roads on a Friday or Saturday night, you’d be blown away.”

Dr Froncioni added: “We need a working group, a coalition. We need to bring all of our resources together, and we need to do it now.”