Care corner: Sergeant Chow Cheuk-yi at his designated blackspot at the junction of Marsh and Gloucester Roads. A simple painted warning sign on the road has improved the junction's safety.

The number of traffic accident blackspots has declined thanks to a smart and simple Police scheme.

Experienced Police traffic officers are assigned a blackspot to 'own', and are required to study its accidents and recommend safety improvements.

Their simple and inexpensive solutions have successfully reduced the number of accidents at blacksites since February, 2001, when their recommendations were first discussed by the Traffic Accident Reduction Co-ordination Committee made up of officers from the Police, and the Transport and Highways Departments.

At that time there were 16 blacksites and 12 potential blacksites on Hong Kong Island. By the end of February this year, there were only five blacksites and 10 potential blacksites listed. Now, the number of blacksites rarely goes beyond about six before appropriate action removes them from the list.

Co-ordinated teamwork by the committee members sees blacksite owners present their analyses and recommendations for resolving the problems. A senior and experienced sergeant is assigned to each traffic blacksite identified from Transport Department statistics.

The sergeant is then responsible for analysing each accident and identifying the causes, designing and co-ordinating enforcement action, ensuring educational activities, and presenting appropriate re-engineering proposals for junctions with inherent design flaws.

"Sometimes, all it needs to solve a problem is a little paint on the road surface," said Gloucester Road/Marsh Road Blacksite Owner Sergeant Chow Cheuk-yi.

"I found that the main problems were jaywalking, driver inattention, users' intentions being misinterpreted, and bad lighting under the Marsh Road flyover. I organised some education and enforcement action at the appropriate times of the day and many warnings were issued to careless drivers and pedestrians. We also issued several fixed penalty tickets for illegal setting down of passengers and summonses for jaywalking."

The Blacksite Ownership Scheme has proven to be a cost-effective solution to a long-standing problem and will continue to improve road safety.