The drunk drivers in our midst

Jan 19, 2015 Editorial

The law is clear; avoid driving after drinking. The records would show that too many accidents, many of them fatal, were caused by drunk driving. All over the world law enforcement officers take a very serious view of this offence.
In the United States there is a law that actually makes a fatality caused by a drunk driver a murder. It stemmed from a drunk driver killing a young person. The mother went the distance to get the authorities to deem such accidents a homicide and succeeded. The first person will be spending a very long time in jail, perhaps never to see the streets again.
In Guyana we have had our fair share of such road deaths but the longest anyone spent in jail is four years. To add to the trauma, people do not take legal action against the perpetrator. It is as though whatever the courts decide is the end of the matter.
The insurance companies try their bit but the level of insurance is so low that the companies opt for the victim to spend some money up front before chipping in. And depending on the coverage the other person has, there is a limit to how far the compensation would go.
One would expect that those entrusted with upholding the law would at least adhere to the law but this is observed more in the breach. It is perhaps a case of do as I say and not as I do. Then again, it may be a case that the perpetrators may consider themselves above the law and could subvert the course of justice.
There have been quite a few cases of prominent people getting off scot free because they managed to slip some money to the police who in turn would botch the investigation. Sometimes the perpetrator is so high up the social ladder that even the police are afraid to pursue their investigations.
For example, there is a policeman, albeit a special constable who is crippled for the rest of his natural life. He was riding along the East Coast Demerara public road when a Government Minister knocked him down. The Minister fled the scene and his son turned up to claim that he was the driver. Nothing has come out of that matter; there was no prosecution and the victim was never even compensated.
Perhaps the authorities wanted to send a message to the rest of society that only certain people need to be using the roadways. However, lesser drivers have been prosecuted out of hand. On Mash Day, in Alberttown, a police rank driving a police vehicle collided with a car driven by a woman and containing her children.
The policeman failed to stop at a major road and to crown it, he was drunk. Fortunately, members of the public were on hand to raise their voices in protest. The police who turned up claimed that they had no breathalyzer so they had to take the rank to the Brickdam Police Station for testing. A relative of the victim went along so one can assume that the police could not hide the fact.
It was not long after that Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh crashed into a car, this time in Campbellville. He too was drunk and he too failed to stop at the major road. He walked away from the scene without offering any help to the victims. We now want to see if he would be charged with leaving the scene of an accident, with failing to render assistance and above all, drunk driving.
A member of his clique turned up at the scene to offer compensation to the point of replacing the damaged vehicle. This is a case of money talks but the law is still the law. The police should act; the victim must have her day in court.
However, we doubt this very much and thus the indictment of this country and its government.

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