The death late on Saturday night in a road crash of Emanuel Pereira brought the death toll on the Island's roads so far this year to ten.

If this rate continues, Bermuda could see more than 20 people die, the highest number since crash helmets were made mandatory in the 1970s.

That makes the necessity of reading and adopting the report compiled by Dr. Joseph Froncioni and his fellow researchers on frequency of collisions and their effects essential reading.

The report, which was covered in this newspaper just two weeks ago, comprehensively identified who was most likely to be involved in road crashes, what the likely causes were and the severity of injuries.

Two findings were most stark: 16-year-olds are far and away the most likely people to be involved and injured in crashes, and visitors on rental bikes are statistically at much greater risk than residents.

The report also showed that apart from fatalities, severe injuries – often lifelong – are all too common for motorbike riders.

What it also showed was that the rate of accidents is climbing – and this year proves there is no end in sight.

But the report did not stop at looking at the causes and effects – including the enormous financial cost of bad driving – it made a raft of recommendations as well.

It is no disservice to the researchers to say that few of the recommendations were new. It is a disservice to the community that many of them have been aired before and have never been implemented.

The report has been presented to the Premier and the Police. And Dr. Froncioni, a former chairman of the Road Safety Council, will show the findings to anyone who asks.

Surely ten deaths in just three and a half months and 218 accidents resulting in injury in the last 12 weeks alone are a call to action.

If ten people were murdered in a little less than 100 days, or ten people were drowned in a faulty boat, the community would be in an uproar.

What will it take for the community to stop acting as if carnage on the roads is just a fact of life, or in the case of ten people this year, death?