Bermuda recorded another road fatality over the weekend - the seventh so far this year - and there seems to be no respite in sight.

By chance, Transport Minister Ewart Brown was telling the local media this weekend that plans to make seat belts mandatory will become law when the House of Assembly resumes in the autumn.

It is impossible to argue against the use of seat belts. It is obvious that in most circumstances, they reduce the degree of injury and may save lives as Works Minister Alex Scott claimed after being involved in an accident in which he was wearing his belt.

But to assume that making the wearing of seatbelts mandatory will actually reduce the death toll on the roads would be wrong and could be dangerous if people assumed that that was all that was necessary. The majority of deaths on the roads this year have involved motorcycles and/or alcohol. That is a lethal combination which seat belts will do nothing to change.

What seat belts will do is make offenders out of drivers who forget to put their belts on while giving the Police yet another job. What is needed at this juncture is not a seat belt law, but a public awareness campaign which urges drivers to buckle up both themselves and other passengers, including, most importantly, small children and babies.

If the campaign does not work and a link between accident injuries and the failure to wear seat belts can be shown, then wearing the belts should be made mandatory. But to do so now would be going overboard.

Instead, Government needs to look closely at the link between alcohol and road deaths. People who are caught driving while impaired could be sent to prison for a short sharp shock as opposed to the current year off the road and $1,000 fine for a first offence. That could act as a deterrent, as would fining the bar owner who allowed a patron to get well over the limit in the first place.

In the meantime, more deterrence - spot checks of drivers leaving Hamilton in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings - would do a lot to persuade people to take a taxi or to take up the practice of designated drivers.

Sober drivers who obey the rules of the road and keep to what passes for the speed limit are the answer to reducing the death toll and the accident rate. Achieving that means convincing motorists and motorcyclists to stop being stupid when they begin to drive.