Road Carnage – Call for Renewed Traffic Policing

Aug 29, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Renewed awareness, strict implementation of traffic rules, and harsh deterrents are the need of the hour to prevent this ongoing catastrophe.

Mortality salience is the awareness by individuals that their death is inevitable. However, the daily increase in the number of deaths due to road accidents has hastened and heightened both the level of awareness and inevitability. The trend in injuries and death is becoming alarming, with human factor being the prime contributor. With the construction of more highways to ease congestion, the callous practice of speeding has now become a major bugbear for traffic officers. Most drivers continue to act like maniacs in a tearing hurry, and error in judgment often leads to major accidents. Reckless driving, over speeding, decline to follow traffic rules, and drunken driving are main reasons for road accidents. The lives of many individuals have been enhanced by motorization and societies, but the benefits have come with a price.

Car users jockey to get in front of others, as all try to carve out their own prime moving road real estate space.

The road accidents are happening most often due to the reckless and speedy driving of the vehicles, disobeying of traffic rules, attitudes of the “right of the mighty” bigger vehicles toward the smaller vehicles such as motor bikes, poor maintenance of the vehicles on the road, drunk and driving, driver fatigue, and above all the appalling condition of the already chocked roads with every inch encroached by parked vehicles.

In an interview last year, Traffic Chief Dennis Stephens explained that while traffic ranks are deployed to certain highways, especially the Mandela-Eccles Four Lane highway, the responsibility still stands with those behind the wheel. He noted that too often, drivers tend to lose consideration for the safety of others. Sadly, it is blatantly obvious based on current happenings that consideration for the safety of others is certainly not a priority for those behind the wheel.  Driving home this revelation even further is the fact that in 2015 Acting Traffic Chief Dion Moore stated that it is with the five ‘Cs’- Care, Commonsense, Consideration, Courtesy and Caution that a person moves from point A to point B. There is none so blind as those cannot see the “common “c” let alone the capital “C”. “.

The World’s first road traffic accident is supposed to have occurred in 1869 in a small town in the Irish Midlands.  Everybody concerned at that time reported to have said, “This should never happen again.” But more than a century later, 1.2 million people are killed on roads every year and millions more have been injured. For every individual killed, injured, or disabled by a road traffic accident, there are countless others deeply affected by the cost of prolonged medical care, loss of a bread winner, or the extra funds needed to care for those left with disabilities.

The carnage that relegates human lives to that of garbage must cease immediately.  Road deaths and injuries are preventable.  I join with my fellow Guyanese in calling on the incoming Traffic Chief Krishna Ramana to recognize that the number of fatal and disabling road accidents is a real public health challenge.

The approach to implement the rules and regulations available to prevent road accidents has been ineffective and half-hearted. Awareness creation, strict implementation of traffic rules, harsh deterrent and scientific engineering measures are the need of the hour to prevent this public health catastrophe. This approach should address the traffic system as a whole and look into interactions between vehicle, road users, and road infrastructure to identify solution. Some of the modalities that should be looked at in the prevention should be the condition of the roads, ensuring that they are well maintained with frequent relaying of road surfaces and markings of road safety signs, proper well marked footpaths for pedestrians and pedestrian crossings at intersections. The provision of separate identified lanes for slow-moving and fast-moving vehicles should also be done. Roads, should be well lit so that visibility is good. Parked vehicles especially trucks should utilize warning devices such as hazard lights, cones, or reflective signs to alert other drivers of the parked truck. Effective community participation also plays a key role in the prevention of road accidents. Everybody should be concerned and should work toward achieving a safe road travel so that “road accidents should never happen again.”  Deterrents of a severe nature, should take the form of unprecedented lengthy prison sentences for drivers whose reckless driving caused death, with the number of deaths serving as the factor for increase in years to be served, moreover if alcohol was also a contributory factor.

Seeing that Care, Consideration, Commonsense, Courtesy and Caution have exited the minds of Guyanese drivers then they should be joltingly returned using never -before -heard measures, in order to ensure the safety of other road users.

If the way in which Guyanese use the roads was the barometer employed to measure its civilization, it would be prehistoric to say the least.

We must step into the light and drive right.

Yvonne Sam.

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• drunken, implementation, rules, traffic, Yvonne Sam.

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