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Jul 11, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Kaieteur News – A few emails over the past three years have informed me that the roundabout at the Cenotaph, outside the Bank of Guyana, is really not a roundabout. So it is not Guyana’s first roundabout. I examined it, and I agree.
Guyana’s first roundabout is at the Kitty pump station where the Eve Leary seawall going east ends, and from thereon you enter Clive Lloyd Drive. The engineer in charge of the project was Sherod Parkinson. Since I am on the seawall with my dog in the mornings, I would stop and speak to Mr. Parkinson while he supervised the construction.
Please see the following two columns on my take on the seawall roundabout; Friday, April 27, 2018, “Was the seawall roundabout necessary?” and Saturday, May 12, 2018, “The seawall roundabout and the Emperor’s new clothes.” I also did a couple of articles on the recent roundabout at Sheriff Street and the Railway Embankment.
Since all my publications on the roundabouts, I received several emails from foreign based Guyanese who informed me that roundabouts are a positive road system that works smoothly. Those persons meant well in their correspondence with me but they do not live in Guyana, do not get a taste of the absolutely ancient bureaucracy that is the norm in Guyana (women cannot wear a sleeveless dress to enter a public building), and do not experience the nature of human existence in Guyana.
Roundabouts work in countries where the nationalities do not embody the flaws of a nationality named Guyanese. We have the worst drivers in the world, and I would like to repeat that – in the world. Thus, I anticipated that such uncivilised drivers are going to make a mess of the roundabout thus we should retain the traffic signals. And they are doing that because they are incapable of having the capacity to understand the concept of a roundabout.
Last Saturday, I drove on Sheriff Street to pick up my daughter at the Cultural Centre. I don’t go out in the nights so I don’t know what the traffic situation is like. Well, I did Saturday night last. No driver observed lane driving on Sheriff Street that night and there wasn’t one traffic rank in sight. After picking up my daughter, I decided, I wasn’t going home using that street.
I took Homestretch Avenue going west to turn north into Vlissengen Road. The traffic signals were blinking and no one slowed. A car almost hit us. At the junction of Irving Street and Lamaha Street, it was the same breakdown. Imagine on a Saturday night when the entire world goes out, traffic signals at two very busy junctions were not working. As they say in common parlance, I ran from the coffin (Sheriff Street) and met up with the jumbie (non-functioning traffic signals).
Since 2018 when Mr. Parkinson and I would talk, I have not seen him but I kept his mobile number in my phone. I called him last week after I nearly got hit, travelling west in the roundabout to enter the seawall road. Here is what takes place at that sight. First, it is important to note that once you are in the roundabout, you have absolute priority; all traffic must give way to you.
As you enter the seawall circle from the Kitty Public Road to make a slight left to enter the seawall road, east bound drivers on Carifesta Avenue are not stopping for you because they think you are going east and the circle is wide enough for them to enter it while you are in it. It is the same thing at Sheriff Street and the Railway Embankment.
While you are in the circle heading west to make slight left into David Street, north bound drivers on Sheriff Street are not stopping because they believe you are leaving the circle to go north up Sheriff Street. These are the inherent defects of the roundabouts and people are going to die.
Mr. Parkinson told me he was travelling west in the pump station roundabout to make a left into the seawall road and east bound traffic on Carifesta Avenue did not stop for him. I had that experience countless times. Mr. Parkinson and I were lucky; we were not broadsided. I am relieved that Mr. Parkinson was not hurt. But think of how ironic it would have been that the door of the vehicle of the man who built Guyana’s first roundabout was hit while he was in the circle. I guess life goes on in this strange country named Guyana where surrealism has taken on new meaning.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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