Motorcycle Accidents Renew Safety Concerns

Since the start of 2026, Belize has recorded several motorcycle‑related incidents across the country. On January third, Brian Miguel was killed after being thrown from his motorbike during a collision with a Ford F‑150 along the George Price Highway. Just days later, eight‑year‑old Karter Benedit of Hopkins Village remains hospitalized after being struck by a motorcycle while crossing the street after school. The recent crashes have renewed urgent calls for stronger road safety measures, particularly near schools, highlighting the dangers of reckless riding and the serious consequences for both motorists and pedestrians. Even before this latest incident, Transport CEO Chester Williams confirmed that Cabinet has been reviewing new measures aimed at tightening motorcycle training requirements and strengthening enforcement.

 

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport

“The cabinet have decided that we revisit the whole process and see what the government can do to subsidize or to help in ensuring that those persons who are licensed motorcycle riders for maybe two to five years with infraction, they may undergo a certain part of the training and those persons with less than two years and new applicants may undergo the full training with them being subsidized by government. Our ministry already put together information paper that will go to cabinet at the next meeting, I think, next week for consideration. So, I believe that after next week’s cabinet meeting, we should be able to have a definitive direction in terms of how we will approach the training for motorcycle. But again, like I said to you before that, the Prime Minister himself have recognized that the training is essential. And so there is no difficulty for us to be able to get the support from cabinet in making sure that we train our people so that they can be more safer on our highways. I’m happy that last year we had a reduction in these incidents and again. It happened because of the tough approach we took for the last quarter of last year where we had a lot of enforcement. And again, enforcement is going to be stepped up this year. We have received the approval for some additional officers and we have also done a cabinet paper that will also go to cabinet next week requesting additional traffic officers. So we’re trying to take the department to at least two hundred persons persons where we’ll be able to do twenty-four hours enforcement on our highways. And again, this will come additional resources including body cams for the officers and dash cams for the vehicles. We’ll be looking at speed guns, we’ll be looking at breathalyzers and things along the line.”