Seemingly normal people commit traffic offences on Bermuda's roads each and every day. Don't believe me? Just stop by Magistrates' Court any day of the working week and see traffic offenders lining the benches throughout, business suits and all.

The fact that traffic offences are so "normal" in Bermuda makes it very difficult for people, such as Road Safety Council (RSC) Officer Roxanne Christopher, to do their jobs in keeping Bermuda's roads safe.

"We lack that general support and often times when there is a fatality there is an outcry on 'what can you do', 'what can the RSC do to stop this from happening', but there needs to be more support in the initiatives for us to move forward," said Ms Christopher.

"We constantly make recommendations for legislation but we have not been successful in getting a majority of our initiatives carried through. Sometimes we are too far ahead of what the public is ready for, but when will the public be ready (?) because it affects every single one of us," she said.

"Unfortunately the loss of life on our roads has become normal, which is crazy, which is ridiculous, and we just haven't had enough."

Despite the lack of support, Ms Christopher and others at the RSC are constantly working to come up with new ways to make Bermuda's roads more safe. For starters, later this year they plan to implement a points system, whereby those individuals caught speeding or drunk driving will recieve an allocated number of points. When that individual reaches 12 points their license will automatically be taken away.

By June, 2008 another initiative will be put into play whereby an Electrical Vehicle Monitoring System (EVS) will be able to scan moving vehicles to check whether they have been licensed or not. All cars will have to be fitted with the EVS or risk being detected by Police, Ms Christopher explained.

Such initiatives will cut back the amount of unlicensed vehicles on the road and also combat the occasional forged registration stickers, she admitted.

"Falsified registration stickers will no longer become an issue because once your vehicle expires and if you continue to drive your vehicle, as it drives along the roads of Bermuda it will be detected by these devices."

According to Ms Christopher one of the biggest safety issues on the roads are drinking and driving offences.

"I feel that when it comes to drinking and driving we don't see any decrease because our officers are not stringent enough, it's also not mandatory for (offenders to complete programmes like) re-education training," she said.

Though she believes items like the modified breathalysers (used to test a driver's sutability to drive) are a great idea in other areas of the world, she does acknowledge that other steps must be attempted on the Island first.

In a perfect world, she explained that she would like to enforce a re-education programme, a 16-week course emposed on all drunk drivers which must be completed before their license is given back. She would also put more restrictions on driving times of offenders; seeing that most of the offences happen between the dusk hours, and make sure that laws are enforced from the judicial level through to the police services.

"Road Safety Commission cannot be the only advocates to make sure the roads are safer. We need more community and business partners in many jurisdictions. It has taken at least ten years and millions of dollars invested in education and reform before you see a change in the driving trends in a country, which directly affects road safety."

"This Island is way behind the times in terms of drinking and driving."

When it comes to less serious offences like tinted windows, Ms Christopher asserts that it is up to the Police to enforce this.

She said: "The legal limit (for tinting) is 35 percent transparency anything under that (meaning darker), other than for medical purposes, is illegal and people risk getting cited and pulled over by the Police. Police need to be enforcing this."

She explained that when windows are too dark other drivers are unable to see through that vehicle, and for instance, during a collision other drivers will need to be able to see who was driving the car that injured them or their vehicle.

Though such offences are not at the top of their priority list, it is still important for the public to be respectful of the laws; everything from speeding, using a cell phone while driving and running red lights; as it is only as a collective that the roads of Bermuda can be made a safer place.