FIVE DEAD IN ACCIDENTS IN ONE WEEKEND

Jul 05, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Last week, a man was struck down by a motor vehicle on Sheriff Street. He died on the spot.
Another man was crushed by a vehicle after he lay asleep on the Corentyne Public Road. And in another major accident, this time in the interior, three persons lost their lives.
Over one weekend, five persons were killed in road accidents. Our roads are dangerous.
But this article is not a call just for greater safety on our roadways; this is not a call for those free-riding and free-driving cops to take a more concerted action to stop speeding and reckless use of the roadways. This is not a call for the speed guns and for a new traffic campaigns to be launched.
It may be recalled that not so long after a similar spike in traffic accidents, a promise was made to make some improvements on our roads and a high-level meeting was held with the Road Safety Council.
Today most of the major public thoroughfares are still poorly lit. While most of the traffic lights are working, there are some that have been out of order for some time and need rectifying. While significant improvements have taken place in our road network, there is still a lack of adequate road signs including speed limit signs with the result that some traffic ranks like to play cat-and- mouse with drivers.
This article is however not about all of those things which will eventually be put right after there is another series of accidents that send the nation into shock.
This article is about the dangers on our roads. Whenever you leave your house, you should be clear that you are embarking on a step that involves some risk.
You may do all the right things, take all the necessary precautions, but you still may end up losing your life or being seriously injured because you simply cannot control what someone else does.
So everyone has to become conscious of the fact that when you leave your home there are risks involved.
You therefore have to say a prayer that you will return home safely because you can never tell what some idiot will do on the road. That idiot’s action could cause you or someone with you their life or it could result in serious injury.
There is a law of probability which states that everyone has a risk of something happening to them.
The risk for some is greater than others, depending on a number of factors. Thus, so long as you leave your home and have to travel on the roadways of Guyana, there is a risk of an accident occurring.
But there are steps that you can take to minimize that risk. For one you should avoid speeding. Even if the other person is speeding and you are not, you stand a better chance of survival if at the point of impact you are not proceeding at a fast rate of speed. Therefore the first thing to do is to slow down.
More importantly, though, persons should reduce the probability of having an accident by not making unnecessary trips on the roadway.
There is far too much traffic on our roadways. You would believe that given the volume of traffic in Guyana that the country’s economic growth is surpassing that of China.
If we could all agree to take one day off in which there would be no travel at all, it would seriously impact on the number of road accidents and the number of road fatalities.
If everyone who lives in Guyana were to agree that for one day in every week, they would not engage in unnecessary traffic this would make a big difference because it would mean that the possibility of an accident would be seriously slashed since overall there will be less traffic.
At the same time, Guyanese have to make safe use of the roads. Why would anyone want to sleep on a roadway.
This is like lining up on a firing range and hoping not be hit. This is huge risk. Yet almost very day you can see persons selling on busy roads, youths liming on street corners, children playing games on the roadway and drunks and destitute persons sleeping on the roads.
We do not need a campaign to remove these persons from off the road. What we need is for these individuals to recognize that they are endangering their own lives by being on the road and therefore the less time spent outside of the home or office, the safer it will be for all concerned.

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FIVE DEAD IN ACCIDENTS IN ONE WEEKEND

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