Haiti Road Condition, an Accident Waiting to Happen

All throughout Haiti, County roads are largely unpaved and littered with potholes. Mountainous roads are particularly perilous, with hairpin turns and an absence of guardrails. Often made of gravel, they can cause a vehicle to slide off the shoulder to death 1,000 feet below.

The government of Haiti (GOH) insists it has no money in its budget to rescue drivers in perilous situations, do clean-up after accidents, or remove stalled autos obstructing traffic. But the GOH's claims are questionable.

In 1991, maintenance road work for Route Nationale #1 (RN1) and #2 (RN2) was stopped by the GOH. The World Bank (WB) had loaned $50 million to repair the roads, and became alarmed when the project was cancelled: more deterioration of the roads would halt Haiti's progress as a developing nation. More than a decade passed before President Preval pled for funding from the WB to start road maintenance again in 2009. The WB relented loaning Haiti $200 million to reconstruct RN1 and RN2. Work was halted again on RN1 and RN2, the 2010 earthquake setting back the maintenance schedule even further.

With the GOH, road repair is an off-again, on-again affair. It receives multi-million dollar loans it defaults on, canceling the road project, and then comes back later begging for another loan.

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