Traffic lights criticism: Guyana is a disappearing wilderness

Feb 22, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – Here is a quote from a newspaper editorial that had these words to say about traffic lights: “Traffic lights command you to “Stop” or “Go” based on technology and the country’s traffic authorities. You wait, you watch, you fiddle with your radio, you glance at the numbers counting down… Traffic lights are symbols of authoritarianism and objects of resentment.”
From the moment anyone human with commonsense reads that, they know something is wrong with the country in which that expression came from. Let’s do the analogy with traffic lights and other waiting lines.
You go into a bank, you take a number and you wait. Then a voice says: “number 33” and you go up to the wicket. What is the difference with that and waiting at a red light for green to come on? You go to a supermarket, your filled trolley is in front of you and you wait in line. You play with your phone or you read something until you reach the cashier. What is the difference with that and waiting at a red light?
You join a line at an airport until it is your time for the immigration officer to serve you and to stamp your passport to enter the country you arrived in. What is the difference with that and waiting for the red light? You join the queue to see a cricket match or football match or a concert and you wait until the gates are opened. What is the difference with that and waiting for the red light?
I could go on but why bother. For someone to argue against the usefulness of traffic lights is like pushing an open door. There can only be one adjective used to describe the argument against the value of traffic lights and that is “asinine.” No matter how moderate you want your language to be, there is no substitute for the word asinine to describe how that person thinks about traffic signals.
Let’s make a case for traffic signals (why should anyone make a case; it is commonsense?). The main value, the essential value in the function of traffic lights is the potent awareness that going through a red light carries the possibility of serious injury or death.
The driver is conscious that the onset of red allows traffic to flow in the opposite direction which has the green and he/she will be going in full impact onto the vehicles that have the green. A normal human always approach the red with definitive consciousness because he/she knows that they cannot drive through oncoming traffic. To put it bluntly, there is no alternative scientifically and in engineering terms for traffic signals.
Our first roundabout at the Cenotaph outside the Bank of Guyana carried and still carries traffic signals. Unless I live in Timbuktu and you live in Timbuktu, then we are all unaware about what happens at the two roundabouts that were constructed by the Kitty pump station and at Railway Embankment and Sherriff Street. What happens there? Drivers do not stop. And how I know that? I live in Guyana and not Timbuktu.
The person who wrote that condemnation of traffic lights just had that wild thought and is not familiar with the traffic situation in Guyana. Two things about Guyana’s traffic are glowingly conspicuous. One is we have per capita one of the highest road fatalities in the world. The other is that perhaps we have the most reckless drivers in the world.
I have never, I repeat never, talked to a foreigner who conceded that Guyana’s drivers are not the worst in the world. Every foreigner I spoke with thinks driving in Guyana is a nightmare. What this country has done is to copy the roundabout concept from other lands that do not have the chaotic traffic situation that obtains in Guyana.
Maybe the roundabout will work here in the future when the psychological infrastructure of the Guyanese people are transformed and purified and the physical infrastructure of Guyana could accommodate roundabouts with the functionalist efficacy we see in other countries.
What is so depressing about Guyana is that oil and gas will not change the collective mentality of this nation. So many people complain to me that they are afraid of the roundabouts (I know I am), but their feelings remain unpublished. No one in this land is going to voice his/her opinion on the stupid and silly rejection of traffic lights as being authoritarian. My advice to you is to use the traffic lights. They save lives. And be extremely careful about the roundabouts where no one stops and chaos is easily observable.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

Latest News

Traffic lights criticism: Guyana is a disappearing wilderness

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show | November, 6th, 2024

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

$1.5M up for grabs at K&S National Futsal Championship

Big Names Ready for Group 4 Showdown at ENET...

West Indies hammer England in series decider

Guyana Amazon Warriors confirm squad for 2024...

Excitement brews ahead of Hamilton Green’s KO...

SAMUEL FOO wins SEN School’s Chess Competition

Features/Columnists

A broad-based movement for the people’s voice on oil

Rising Gun Crimes in the Caribbean: Urgent Action required by all

That ever-present ‘they’

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

Traffic lights criticism: Guyana is a disappearing wilderness

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show | November, 6th, 2024

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]