Dear Editor,
I thought that I had heard everything, but Vidyanand Persaud’s suggestion that traffic control contributes to pile-ups, and that traffic lights are likely to hurt more than help in his letter captioned “Traffic lights like pedestrian crossings may cause more accidents” (07.02.21) has really blown the top off the incredible. Apparently, contrary to certain assumptions I had been labouring under over the past six months or so, the “silly season” is not yet over. If this was an attempt at “tongue in the cheek” witticism it has surely fallen far short of expectations.
Now let me see if I get this right. Persaud is making an argument that there is no need for traffic controls, electronic or otherwise, in a less than one square mile area where a disproportionate amount of the nation’s commercial activities occur. In other words, vehicular and pedestrian traffic flow at the junction of Regent and Camp streets, Camp and Lamaha, Brickdam and High and so on and so forth at peak hours in the mornings, middays and afternoons will be better served if there were no impediments to individual assertions of the right of way. Man! The more one lives the more one learns, although not all that is revealed is worthy of inculcation.
Look Vidyanand, it is not traffic control, mechanical or otherwise that causes accidents and pile ups, it is the indiscipline of road users. If we buy into your argument then highways and freeways should be free of deadly crashes and mangled bodies, because the flow of traffic through those corridors is much freer than that found within city limits. How can you explain the reality of more mangled vehicular collisions on our freeways than in the city with its abundant major road stops. I just don’t get it Vidyanand, I just don’t.
Traffic lights work best when they are synchronized according to traffic flow, and when their functionality is not haphazard as occurs in Guyana. In addition, if Guyanese road users have not yet gotten accustomed to or acclimatized to modern traffic control methods, the adjustments being made in the developed nations in Europe and elsewhere are hardly likely to ameliorate the situation at home. And it is not traffic lights that bring about a situation of pedestrians attempting to dodge or weave their way through vehicles as motorists step on the gas. That kind of interaction is a function of human indiscipline, stupidity and recklessness, whether they are exhibited by Wall Street types or some indolent shmuck whose cerebral revolutions can be equated with 1/32 of a somersault of a crablouse. I am all for freedoms, de-regulations etc, but I draw the line where arrogance, hubris, or just plain class pompousness are likely to become a threat to life and limb. And these bizarre virtues seem peculiarly preponderant among those controlling the steering wheels of powerful mechanical contraptions, particularly in small nations like Guyana where such control is a symbol of class status.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
