Latest update April 20th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 22, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column
There is never a dull moment in Guyana, simply because too many people do dull things. How can one explain the spate of road fatalities if people are not doing dull things? It is as if everybody is in a terrible hurry to get where they are going.
There is the saying that more haste means less speed, and that is so true. Early Saturday morning there was a collision at the junction of Albert and Church Streets. This is a place where everyone who drives along the road knows that all traffic crossing Church Street must stop. But the drivers are either too busy to stop or simply ignorant to believe that once they are on the road then they have the right of way.
That is only one case of stupidity. A friend of mine died on the railway embankment during the week. There he was, riding along the roadway, when a driver opened his door into the traffic. My friend happened to be the unfortunate one who was coming along the way. He crashed into the door and died.
There was the case of the man who got killed on the Corentyne highway. Some reports say that he was lying on the roadway and the vehicle rode over him. Others say that he was on the road waiting for some form of transportation when he was hit. Whatever the truth, he became another fatality.
The most horrific of all this was the teenage driver who killed three people and injured two. The strange thing is that all of these were at different places. This driver hit a man on a bicycle then continued along his merry way. He then hit two sisters and their niece, killing them on the spot.
If one thought that that was the end of the story, one was sadly mistaken. The driver then continued to hit another man. When he eventually stopped he reportedly told the authorities that he thought that he was hitting animals.
He had to be really drunk to be unable to identify people on the roadway. Then again, he had to be delusional to believe that there were so many animals on the roadway for him to hit within the space of a few minutes.
These things make one realize that our traffic laws and the ensuing penalties are very lax. I am certain that we have killed more people on the roads than for the corresponding period last year. The fate of these drivers is still to be determined, but I do know that in some countries they would have been charged with murder.
The United States, recognizing the irresponsible behaviour of some drivers, upped the penalty for drunk driving. And this happened because some of the parents of the victims protested. In Guyana we take the situation sitting down, and drivers are allowed to continue their merry way. Some of them go to jail for a few years, no more than three or four, and return to the roads.
And they do this because despite the belief that we are a litigious people, we do not pursue the driver. Despite the penalty awarded by the courts, the survivors can take private action. They can sue the errant driver for everything he has.
We drive the way we do because the penalty is meaningless. For one, insurance companies do not impose their own penalty. In some countries where the insurance is already high, the company simply takes it higher. No one likes to be hurt in the pocket, with the result that drivers are ultra-cautious. It is not that there are no accidents, but these are drastically reduced from what would have been the case had there not been what is known as the double whammy.
I have a friend who drinks and drives in Guyana because he can get away with it. When he is in the United States, from the moment he takes one beer he parks the car and summons a friend or uses a taxi. He is afraid of the penalty he may attract for any accident for driving in an inebriated condition.
I would expect that we would have learnt from the experience of others, but it would seem that some of us are in the mode of believing that whatever happens to others will not happen to us. That is the height of foolishness.
One worrying thing is that there will come a time when people will take the law into their own hands. They are going to assault the errant driver. And the offshoot is that drivers who are not at fault will be assaulted.
We recently had the case of a driver in the city who was speeding along a narrow stretch of roadway. It is said that he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a fence. To the horror of the people who saw what happened, a child was caught between the vehicle and the fence. Need I say that the child died?
What sickens me is the attempt by the relatives of the errant driver to justify the accident. These are also the people who become angry when the courts refuse to grant bail. They are certain that their relative has a right to be punished leniently.
These things worry me, because there are so many other things that are of concern. We have to worry about the effect of the blacklisting imposed by the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce (CFATF). And that is another story.
The CFATF said that Guyana’s money could have a tainting effect on the global financial situation. That is a joke. With all the money that Guyana may have, the country will hold less than one per cent of all the money. The issue of Guyana corrupting the international financial system must be a joke.
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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