When was the last time you travelled in a minibus through the city? If you have been doing it as frequently as we have, then we are sure you have several stories to tell, some of them scary.
The most frequently told stories, we are sure, have to do with the way minibus drivers attempt to evade the many traffic lights around the city. Okay, we admit that not only minibus drivers are involved in this tactic, but our experiences have only been with minibuses. Not that we have not travelled in taxis, but we have had relatively good experiences with them. Probably because we have not travelled with them at peak hours, we may never know.
When the authorities reintroduced traffic lights we are sure they were hoping that they would have regularised the traffic in and around the city and made the streets safer. Shortly after the lights began to work that hope would have flown through the window. Initially it may have been thought that drivers may not have understood the traffic lights, and we are sure most of them didn’t as they were not like the ones that existed before, and as such they were attempting to avoid them.
However, we have long since realised that drivers are just trying to get away from the long count down at the traffic lights and unfortunately they have not realised, or they don’t want to, that they are not the only ones who are doing it. Rather it seems that most drivers have come up with this not-so-brilliant idea.
One morning we were in a minibus and it took us about 25 minutes to get from Alberttown to Robb Street in a minibus. Unbelievable, but very true. The minibus driver kept attempting to avoid the traffic lights but every small street he turned through he found himself behind a long line of vehicles. At one point even he became so frustrated that he loudly stated that he should have stuck to the street with the traffic lights as there would have been no doubt about the line of vehicles moving. As it was then in the street he was it was hard to determine whether vehicles were moving or not. Eventually we arrived at our destination but by then we were so livid we could have told off the entire world. While we would have experienced the said thing before it never caused us to lose so much time in a minibus.
Another thing we have found, and this may somewhat contradict one point we mentioned above, before the traffic lights were reintroduced it seemed that the traffic moved more quickly. At some points where there are no traffic lights, drivers manoeuvre their way and the line of vehicles move. We admit that there may have been quite a few accidents at these points, but the lines moved. We are not knocking traffic lights there are good, but as has been mentioned by many the count times are too long.
We believe the sensitisation of the public about the traffic lights should have been done as it would have been very important. But we suppose that would not have stopped drivers from trying to avoid the traffic lights.
So apart from the number of accidents caused by reckless drivers we now have to put up with them wilfully making us wait in long vehicular lines. But we suppose it is just the story of the road and even if we start driving our own vehicles, and we hope this could be a reality soon, we would still have long lines to wait in. But we can assure you that we would be in the vehicular lines at the traffic lights.
(thescene@stabroeknews.com)
