A disturbing Road Safety Month

Nov 28, 2015 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Road Safety Month is coming to an end and that end cannot be soon enough. Each month is dedicated to something and given that dedication, there is a focus. The focus on this occasion should have been proper use of the roads and saving the lives of road users. However, Road Safety Month 2015 has been anything but about saving the lives.
Indeed the month started with four road deaths. The second day saw another. President David Granger, addressing the launch of the road safety observances, said that he hoped that there would be some days when there would be no accidents.
There were days when no accidents occurred, but it seemed as if drivers were bent on maintaining a high road fatality figure, because a few days later there would be an accident that would claim multiple lives. On Thursday three people died, two of them when a car crashed into a truck. Then there was a reported case of hit-and-run in the city. That happened Thursday night; so for Thursday, no fewer than four people died on the roads. And all this happened during Road Safety Month.
At the same time the police were hunting a man who killed a woman on the West Berbice Public Road. That accident, like the two on Thursday, was avoidable. Why should a motorist want to transform a public thoroughfare into a race track? And that was not the only case of young people using the roadways as race tracks.
This week, too, we noticed that the courts imposed a 58-month jail term on an errant driver. This is the kind of penalty that should serve as a deterrent. Unfortunately, those who do get into accidents believe that they will never be involved in an accident, because they have a direct link to the fates that determine the outcome.
There were incidents of drunk driving, failure to heed traffic signs, and even driving at excessive speeds. People simply broke the rules, knowing that not much would happen to them should the worst come to the worst. It was the same belief in other countries that caused the United States of America to modify the penalties that could be applied to errant motorists.
Causing a death on the roadways is not merely a case of causing death. Depending on the manner in which the driver operated, he could be charged with murder and indeed some have already suffered the penalties under the amended law. Guyana needs to modify its laws in like manner. Every visitor to this country rates our drivers as being among the worst in the world.
One visitor noted the propensity of other categories of road users to be equally dangerous to themselves and to others. Cyclists use the roads by night without lights; ride in the middle of the road by day and night as if daring vehicles to hit him. Pedestrians are equally irresponsible, chancing their luck between moving vehicles.
What is worrying is that by the time National Road Safety Month ends on Monday, it will go down as having recorded the most road fatalities for the year. And we will be asking questions about the designation of the month as Road Safety Month. Perhaps what actually happened this year may very well see the authorities cancelling any future observance of road safety.
There is also another thing that Guyanese may wish to consider. We all say that we are a litigious people; that we sue for just about everything. However, we do not sue when someone kills our loved ones on the roads. In other countries, people are not content to sit and accept the decisions handed down by the courts. They then go after the perpetrator by way of private civil actions.
Perhaps if we do the same and make people pay, in addition to serving jail sentences, we may see a drastic decline in road accidents. The insurance companies may also target errant drivers. Make the insurance cost high with every accident. That is the case in the United States.

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A disturbing Road Safety Month

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