Belize City Council Partners with Courts Belize for Motorcycle Safety Initiative

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between the Belize City Council and Courts Belize (UNICOMER Limited). The agreement comes about following an observation of an increase in motorcycle accidents within city limits. With Unicomer being the registered dealer for AKT brand motorcycles, the company saw it as their social responsibility to partner with the council.  The goal is to decrease the incidents through a road safety initiative. Belize City Mayor Bernard Wagner, elaborated on the need to collaborate with multiple partners, and to enforce traffic laws.

Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City: “We require again assistance through the transport department as well in terms of really looking at how we could enhance the existing laws that we have in place in terms of penalties. It’s important that we begin to, because we’ll never get there if we don’t begin to really enforce and change bad behavior, change bad habits of our motorcycle drivers but also the drivers who drive the vehicles as well because it has to be about understanding and empathizing with each other and demonstrating courtesy. We have our traffic enforcement team and they have theirs so to be able but ….we know they have a wider responsibility because they have on the once you’re out of Belize City their responsibility takes over but at the same time they are able to provide support in the city, in having more boots on the ground, more eyes on the ground and really we want to engage, we want to educate, and we will enforce.”

This initiative takes a different approach to addressing accidents by putting customer safety as a main priority. Unicomer’s Regional Manager of the Automotive Division, Edgar Alvarez, spoke on the impact of the MOU.

Edgar Alvarez, Commercial Regional Manager, Automotive Division: “We see very important to take care of the people that is in the streets. Not just as the mayor mentioned, riding the bikes, but the people that is surrounding the streets. It’s not just the driver that is the person that is 100% responsible of the accident. We have some pedestrians, we have other people that are involved in accidents that are not behaving as the way they should be. So we saw the increase in the sales of the motorcycles, the increase in the accidents that were happening in the streets and we decided to go the best way possible with the Belize City Council to really have an impact on the society and on the people that are driving the motorcycles.”

Mayor Bernard Wagner was accompanied by Councillor Eluide Miller, who oversees Traffic Management and Councillor Edmund Kwan who oversees Enforcement.