An emergency medical technician told a town hall meeting last night that he could not count the number of dead people he had dealt with on Bermuda’s roads.

Darius Richardson admitted: “I refuse to. If I did, I would break down.”

Mr Richardson’s said his grim message to an impatient, phone-obsessed “party nation” was a reminder to road users to put safety first.

Dennis Lister III, chairman of the Bermuda Road Safety Council said putting the brakes on the island’s “epidemic” of road deaths meant “changing our culture”

The two were speaking at a road safety meeting organised by the Progressive Labour Party at Francis Patton Primary School in Hamilton Parish.

The meeting came only three days after Marco Bowen, 49, became the tenth person to lose their life on our roads this year.

Sarah Lagan, representing The Royal Gazette’s Drive for Change campaign, Anthony Santucci, the head of anti-alcohol abuse charity Cada, and Acting Inspector Dorian Astwood of the Bermuda Police Service traffic unit also attended.

Rachael Robinson, a road safety officer and youth driving instructor from Project Ride, discussed the pain of losing young people to the road.

She said: “I’ve personally lost nine kids that I had an honest to God personal relationship with. It doesn’t get easy.”

The “Better Road Users” forum was organised by area MPs Tinée Furbert, Derrick Burgess and Wayne Furbert.

Ms Furbert said that her constituency had the third highest level of road fatalities.

Drive for Change, with its partner A Piece of the Rock, has pushed for roadside breath test checkpoints, which became a reality last month.

The campaign’s other objectives are the introduction of speed cameras and proper training for new motorbike riders.

She added: “Our goal is to reduce the deaths on our roads.”