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Road rage
Kaieteur News – As reported a few weeks ago, road rage has now gone offroad. The rage that spiraled and exploded into violent action was over a parking space, a man was shot. It was all but inevitable in the crowded confines, the increasingly tight spaces, in Georgetown and adjoining areas. A safe spot on the road while on the move, and an available place to park, have both become a prized occurrence in daily life.
We have more vehicles coming into Guyana, and it is not a trickle. The duty levied on vehicles below 1500cc has been reduced, which serves as an incentive for prospective buyers, perhaps the encouragement for a vehicle owner to add to his or her fleet. There are more importers and mechanisms for direct online buying from overseas, as far away as Japan, so the sedans and SUVs keep rolling off the wharves.
More vehicles mean more stress on roads tortured by long lines, honking horns, impatient tailgaters, speeding and encroaching drivers bent on edging ahead, even if that results in cutting off another driver. In the sum of these circumstances on local roads, this is custom made for fits of rage, expressions of aggression and hostility, and the presence of palpable menace. Courtesy and care went out the window ages ago, with confrontation and clashing being the norm, more or less. Traffic ranks cannot be everywhere, and they are usually not around in times of tension and escalation. Road rage, albeit at a low level, has been a simmering condition on Guyana’s roads in city and country. Georgetown and its outskirts are the worst by far because there is nowhere to go. The fact that everybody is in a hurry only serves to compound an already bad situation.
The Government has made infrastructure a lynchpin of its programmes, with roads featuring prominently. This has its benefits, and they are not tiny. More roads introduce more trouble, in the form of more under-the-radar road rage because most drivers are jostling to get ahead. More roads and more modern ones mean more recklessness and related dangers, with an eye on the growing armies of new, young drivers. It takes years of hard experience, sometimes bitter ones, to slow down the racing of the blood, the high adrenaline rushes. In all this, there is one constant. It is about anger that spills over in full public view, and without a care about who is looking on, where matters could end. We all have heard the horror stories, may have actually seen some of them ourselves, where rage reigns supreme, whatever the consequences.
The environment is peppered with aggressive citizens, drivers and nondrivers, with pedestrians blaming drivers and vice versa. Minibus operators and private taxis attract their share of condemnation for impatience, haste, and angry exchanges in the boiling stew that is Guyana’s roads. However looked at, there is more than enough blame to parcel around liberally. For few are the Guyanese who consistently toe the traffic lines, or display some minimum level of courtesy and consideration to other users of the road, inclusive of the elderly, the younger ones, and the clearly sickly and weak.
Then, there is the issue of parking, which can deteriorate into an elections-style tones and temperatures for a coveted spot. Parking is a growing source of furiousness, with drivers carving out spaces for themselves wherever there is an opening, even if it means blocking a private bridge, or a residential gate. Those blocked in and held hostage are forced to wait on the offender, who more often than not resorts to angry, abusive, and vulgar language when confronted. When there is no regard for law and order, then this is the raging disorderliness that spirals dangerously.
It is our view that tow trucks and heavy fines can be a deterrent for parking violators. Road rage perpetrators must be treated harshly by hefty monetary penalties, possibly jailtime, if only to teach a lesson, keep them in check. The rage and madness on our roads can be said to be of epidemic proportions. Let there be a start to, at least, dealing severely with those whose anger get the better of them to the detriment of others.
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