Road safety is always an issue in Fiji and rightly so. It is always a tragedy when someone is killed.

However, Fiji deserves credit for considerable progress in road safety. In the late 1990s, road deaths sometimes exceeded 100 people per year. Now, even though there are far more cars on the roads, the annual road toll is only a fraction of that. Of course even one road death is one too many so work to improve safety should continue.

In April 2015 I drove from Lautoka to the Nadi airport after dark and found it exceedingly unnerving. Because there was inadequate provision for pedestrians, pedestrians were too close to the road. Buses did not pull completely into bus bays. The situation there may be better now that the road is four lane.

It would improve road safety if everywhere there were adequate provision for pedestrians to keep them away from road traffic. Also, if bus bays were better designed, bus drivers would be more likely to pull completely into them instead of stopping partly on the road.

I hope that Fiji will continue to improve road safety and become a good example for other countries.