Road traffic incidents contribute to so much death and ill health in Bermuda that finding a way to combat it would be like discovering a vaccine.

This vaccine could cure a disease that is killing and crippling hundreds of our people each year.

The Royal Gazette’s Drive for Change road safety campaign is committed to pushing for the necessary changes to make Bermuda’s roads safer but to maximise its effectiveness we need the community to come on board.

We invite you to fulfil your corporate and individual responsibilities to support a campaign designed to reduce death and large-scale injury on the island of Bermuda. Everyone has a vested interest in this issue and the solutions have been identified and agreed upon by our partners at A Piece of the Rock as well as the Bermuda Police Service, EMT services and road safety experts.

Collectively we are advocating for the introduction of roadside sobriety breath testing, speed cameras and a graduated licensing programme — all of which have been proven to significantly improve road safety in many jurisdictions including those comparable to Bermuda.

Drive for Change is approaching its first month in force, having launched on January 29 with a poignant event at East Broadway displaying the names of all 118 people who have died on Bermuda’s roads in the last ten years alone.

Since then we have launched a website dedicated to all of the issues surrounding road safety, which features the research and data backing our objectives.

We have interviewed politicians, those responsible for lobbying government on road safety, those healing the broken bodies, those working to make a positive change and those who are at the very heart of this campaign — the people who have been touched by tragedy.

We are working with the authorities to raise awareness of road safety in general to ensure that every road user is armed with the knowledge to access our highways safely and responsibly.

What is more, we are igniting a grassroots, community-wide movement to push for the necessary changes needed from our lawmakers.

Drive for Change has a busy schedule in the coming months that will see the production of regular road safety content including interviews, films, educational events and events promoting road safety, research and data analysis, polls and surveys, social experiments and activism. Already we have been astounded by the massive response from the community in support of Drive for Change.

We give you this promise — we are committed to improving road safety in Bermuda and we invite you to join us and support us in any way you can.

Reach out to us to find out about a multitude of sponsorship and advertising opportunities as well as volunteering efforts to put an end to the carnage.

• Do you want to be a part of the movement that will finally see the change we need? E-mail: driveforchange@royalgazette.com or call 595-0156 to find out how. To find out more about the campaign, visit: driveforchange.rg.bm