It is easy to have sympathy with Junior Transport Minister Sen. Wayne Caines, who described how helpless he felt that after all that has been done to encourage road safety that another person has died on the roads.

This newspaper has run awareness campaigns, interviewed the families of innumerable victims, published the victims' pictures in the newspaper so that they will not be faceless statistics and appealed countless times for sanity on the roads, all seemingly to no avail.

But Sen. Caines says he will not give up and no one else should either. Today we have published the faces of seven of the eight people who have died on the Island's roads so far this year.

They are people whose lives have been foreshortened. We will never know what they might have achieved had they lived. It is hard to say whose fault it was that they died, but they leave behind families and friends, who, as we explain in interviews with the families of two of the victims of crashes from earlier years, will mourn them forever.

When we speed and break the rules of the road, we don't just put ourselves at risk, but others too.

But there is more that can be done, both in terms of constant awareness campaigns, enforcement of current laws and more efficient monitoring of the roads.

There have been plenty of suggestions in recent days about how to tackle the problem, most of them valid.

First on the list must be speed cameras, which have been promised since the days of former Police Commissioner Colin Coxall when some people now on the roads were riding tricycles.

Why the delay? Why have successive governments failed to implement a seemingly simple deterrent when other seemingly less critical programmes and laws have long been passed?

Second, readers and others have suggested wider and more effective use of CCTV cameras, most importantly to stop impaired drivers before they set off from outside a Hamilton bar on what may turn out to be a fatal journey?

Third, there is room for more traffic calming measures, from speed bumps to signs of frequent accident spots.

Fourth, where are the speed traps? Some people may have felt the Police were being "unfair" in the speeding game when they hid in the bushes, but this is not a game: it is a matter of life and death.

Fifth, many letters to the Editor have called for greater enforcement. The once mighty Police traffic unit no longer seems to exist. It needs to be brought back.

Sixth, we need a consistent and thorough awareness campaign. Road Safety Week and its staged accidents are only a start. This campaign needs to go on throughout the year.

Finally, we need to take another look at the penalties for breaking driving laws. Clearly the current penalties are not working as deterrents.

This is just a start. But we need to collectively stop the madness. We cannot afford any more people being paralysed or killed.