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Apr 14, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

You can have the best laws and policies in this country, there are Guyanese who will turn these laws upside down. This is exactly what is happening in relation to traffic control in the city.
Each morning the police are out directing traffic at some busy junctions. They are trying their best, under difficult circumstances. The volume of vehicles in the city continues to increase and this is making the task of the traffic officers more problematic. It is not easy for these ranks but they stick to the task, often without a word of thanks from John Public.
But while the police traffic ranks are trying their best, the level of indiscipline on our roads continues to grow. Take for example, the situation outside of the Guyana Revenue Authority. Almost on a daily basis, persons stop and park their vehicles in the middle of either of the two lanes outside of that location. This leads to a massive build up of traffic as other drivers have to wait until the vehicle that is badly parked, moves off.
Some of the errant drivers have no shame and no conscience. They know they are creating a traffic jam by parking in the middle of their lanes, yet they will not remove. I saw a case recently where a female driver stopped in the middle of the road and waited until someone came out of the GRA to collect a document from her, before she moved off. She was totally oblivious to the confusion that her illegal stop was causing. She could not care less or could not be bothered by the chorus of tooting horns urging her to move off.
The traffic authorities should station a Traffic Warden permanently outside of this location. The rank should have a stack of traffic tickets because it is almost certain that there will be persons flagrantly flouting the traffic laws outside of the GRA.
The GRA has tried its best to provide parking for its customers. But still there are problems. One of the biggest problems concerns drop-offs. The GRA instead of reserving the existing reserve outside of its Head Office for staff parking, should take a portion of this reserve and use it strictly as a drop-off bay since most days when persons have to be dropped off to conduct business at the GRA, the vehicles they are travelling in have no drop-off bay to allow their passengers to disembark.
The Ministry of Public Works is also doing a fantastic job. In fact, it is doing too good a job and is repairing most of the roads that fall under the control of the Mayor and City Council. It is time for the City Council to undertake the repairs to its roads and bridges.
Quietly and without much fanfare a great deal of work is being done by the Ministry of Public Works in patching and resurfacing roads in the city. They have begun to address also the traffic problems at major intersections. At Camp and Regent Street, for example, they have implemented a no- right turn for vehicles travelling along Camp Street. They have placed signs and made road markings, including repainting the No Parking and No Stopping signs. They have even erected road signs as far as Church Street, indicating to motorists that no right turns will be allowed at Regent and Camp Streets.
But guess what! Each day there are hundreds of motor vehicles that are violating the no-right turn law. It cannot be that all of these motorists do not know that you can no longer turn right from Camp Street into Regent Street.
No, the problem is that many drivers do not care; they openly flout the law. And guess who gets the blame: the government and the Traffic Department.
One of the things that is quite prevalent at that particular junction and also at other junctions is the practice of motorists using the filter lane, which is used for traffic turning left, to proceed either straight ahead. This is becoming a most pervasive problem on our roads. And the interesting thing about it is that when these things are happening, the traffic ranks do not seem to be around.
But worse than that is the barefaced parking that takes place on No Parking and No Stopping signs. Persons park their vehicles on these signs without care. It is almost as if they are saying that they do not give a hoot about the laws; they will escape the hands of the law.
This makes one wonder about the purpose of having traffic laws if persons will so openly and shamelessly flout them.

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