The Road Safety Unit in the Ministry of Transport plans to approach star sprinter Usain Bolt to head a new campaign promoting safe driving on Highway 2000, soon to be renamed Usain Bolt Highway.

"We would love to see him playing an integral role in getting people not to speed on that particular stretch," Kanute Hare, director of the Road Safety Unit, told Automotives.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced in Parliament that that leg of the highway, which officially opened in December 2004, will be renamed in recognition of Bolt's remarkable exploits of the past year.

records

In August 2008, he set world records for the 100 and 200 metres at the Olympics in Beijing, China. Last month, at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany, he again established new world-best (9.58 seconds and 19.19 seconds, respectively) marks for the events.

The Road Safety Unit has worked with Bolt in the past. In 2008, he was one of the celebrity spokespersons for its 'Below 300' thrust to reduce the number of road fatalities in Jamaica.

Hare said the Road Safety Unit has not yet approached the sprinter but plans to do so soon. The St Catherine/Clarendon stretch of Highway 2000 has been the scene of many accidents, several of them fatal. The worst of these took place in September 2007 when six persons died in a two-car collision.

Bolt himself has experienced mishap on the highway which allows maximum speed of 110 kilometres per hour. In April, he crashed his 2009 BMW M3 along the strip but he and two passengers escaped with minor injuries.

Hare says most of the accidents on that section of Highway 2000 are caused by speeding motorists and faulty tyres.

"It is imperative that motorists ensure that the thread depth of their tyres is not below 1.66 millimetres. If so, they are in danger of getting a blowout," Hare explained.

In June, the Road Safety reported approximately 89 motor accidents along the St Catherine/Clarendon leg of Highway 2000. There were 84 such incidents in 2008.