Road Safety that kills

Nov 14, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
The ritualistic platitudes one has heard in relation to Road Safety month, every year for the last decade or more, constitute clear evidence that not only we are not listening to ourselves, but worse, to others who have previously repeated everything, but the new numbers.
Outstandingly, there has never been any published analysis which reveals the authorities’ comprehension of the factors contributory to what are loosely called ‘accidents’. The very fact that the number of deaths keep increasing should impel those who pretend to manage road traffic to examine their ineffectiveness in doing so. Surely by now it should have occurred to them that if they are incapable of thinking through some basic solutions, that there are places which they can go and learn of relevant remedial action already taken – like Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica, for example.
In the meantime they should seriously reflect on how their own virtual negligence and that of such institutions as the GRA, contrive to actively contribute to the carnage which (euphemistic) ‘accidents’ wreak. Between these two institutions – the GRA and the Traffic Department – the sale of licences to amputee (one-handed) drivers have gone unabated over several years. The latter, too great a proportion of whom are public transporters, i.e. taxis, minibuses, trucks, containers and other articulated vehicles, are subject to no training, nor exposure to the traffic regulations. For example, everyone, including the regulators, is unaware of the basic observation of the ‘right-of-way’. The latter has become a matter of discretion, and at times of dangerous indiscretion.
All these road users are unreasonably subject to the same speed limits. Just look at a sugar truck of twelve tons competing with a taxi – I nearly said to beat a red light. But there are hardly enough traffic lights. We insist in not subscribing to international standards and continue to paint ineffectual ‘stop’ signs on muddy, dusty, pot-holed roads; the while being invisible at poorly lit junctures at night. None of the platitudinists seem to appreciate the danger that such an inanity poses to strangers to the city, and to tourists of whom they expect many come next May, 2016.
Then poor lighting is compounded by the of lack pedestrian sidewalks. You just have to motor through Ganges Street, Sophia, along which GPL operates, to wonder at the total indifference to street lighting there – that threatens the lives of anonymous late home-going workers and families. Their deaths become ‘accident’ figures. Meanwhile, it took the killing of one noble lady in an auto-crash in Kitty for humped one-way streets to be established. A grand posthumous initiative!
Nor can the Traffic Chief’s imperviousness to the written pleas for establishing the same precautious humps at the main exit from Sophia, be understood. He only needs to monitor the traffic at the peak morning school hour to appreciate the potential danger of what will be callously termed an ‘accident’. What is perhaps most palpable is the scenario in which one group is talking at, and not with critical stakeholders – insurers, doctors, lawyers, and most importantly, not only the families of the deceased; but also the forgotten maimed whose lives and livelihoods have been so substantially disfigured. They certainly do not sympathise with the view that such a dislocation was an ‘accident’. They, and we, have waited too long for a redeeming strategy to curb this preventable curse.
E.B. John

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