Until thorough investigations are done and there occurs some sort of arrival at the truth, or at least what approximates the truth, there are, frequently, differing opinions on the causes of traffic accidents. The speculation is usually a great deal more intense in those instances when the accidents result in loss of life. It was the same, first, with the multiple fatality accident at Friendship on Tuesday October 15th as it was with last Saturday’s collision between an ambulance and a private car in Linden. Between them, those two accidents claimed seven lives.
A common factor in both incidents would appear to have been speed. In the instance of the Friendship accident eyewitness accounts suggest that the police vehicle was ‘travelling.’ In the instance of the Linden accident and according to the driver of the ambulance, it was the car that came hurtling towards him at high speed before the two vehicles collided. One must repeat, of course, that it would be unwise to definitively apportion blame in the absence of a full and reliable account of what happened.
There is, however, hardly need for confirmation that we are currently experiencing a rough patch in terms of recklessness on our roads that manifests itself chiefly, in a predilection for speed. It is a kind of addiction that makes it difficult for the ‘victims’ of recklessness to change their modus operandi. Employing the expression commonly used in referring to habitual drug users, we have in our midst, unfortunately, significant numbers of speed ‘junkies,’ and there is no reason to believe that they will simply go away of their own volition.
Much of what is needed to begin to address the problem will repose in effective law enforcement and much more. Some measure of change can be realized by heightening people’s awareness of the dangers that attend their reckless behaviour. Personal bitter experiences can also bring change though it would be a good thing if that were not to be the case. There is the problem of the mindless and incurable speed ‘junkies’ (like the group of bikers who periodically appear to confuse the stretch of Robb Street between Wellington and Camp streets with the South Dakota Circuit. These, we believe, are the incurables who will only be restrained by the uncompromising enforcement of the law.
This is where the quality of our traffic management regime comes in. For all sorts of reasons this has always fallen short of what is required to bring the indiscipline and the recklessness on our roads under control. A scarcity of resources has been cited as part of the problem here. Another part of the problem has to do with the substantive underperformance of the Police Traffic Department. We have said in the past that nothing will get better except we begin by acknowledging and moving to correct the problems that we can. That, in itself, appears to be a problem. It is not our opinion, for example, that the high command of the Guyana Police Force accepts some of the weaknesses in the traffic management regime. The example that comes most readily to mind is the widely recognized and articulated view that some traffic ranks are ‘on the take.’ At the senior levels of the Force there is a tendency to deploy the ‘bring us the evidence’ refrain in an altogether absurd and unconvincing attempt to fend off the reality of crooked traffic cops. That will have to change since the perpetuation of improper relationships between traffic policemen and delinquent road users remains one of the major weaknesses in the local traffic administration regime. Speed, recklessness and many of the other more dangerous transgressions that obtain derive directly from what the transgressors believe is their immunity from punishment that derives from their relationships with crooked cops.
From an enlightened observer’s perspective there are other patently obvious weaknesses in the prevailing traffic management regime. There are, for example, far too many instances in which motor-cycled traffic policemen appear indifferent to instances of blatant recklessness, speeding and troublesome ‘knots’ in the traffic that can be loosened by their intervention. All too often there appears to be no focused sense of purpose to the modus operandi of the police bikers. On the whole there is no persuasive evidence of a sustained compliance campaign that matches the scale of the problem. For example, the aura of lawlessness that has long attended the minibus industry appears to have survived the implementation of the Code of Conduct for the sector and what we are told is the obligation of the Police Traffic Department to help oversee its effective implementation.
Speeding would appear to be our biggest challenge. Drivers of police vehicles are among the culprits here. Sometimes you get the impression that those drivers function by a ‘logic’ that affords those responsible for upholding the law immunity from complying with it. Leaving that aside it is clear that the speeding is the dragon that must be slayed if the carnage on our roads is to be arrested. The recent tragic accidents at Friendship and Linden have coincided with the public disclosure that a local agency is about to launch a Defensive Driving programme. Every little may help but we will need to go further. Whatever benefit road users may derive from a Defensive Driving course (and there is a good deal that can be derived) we must not lose sight of the fact that speeding is an addiction that can only really be cured by a change in the mindset; so that any Defensive Driving initiative has to be accompanied by a sustained anti-speeding, anti-recklessness campaign attended by penalties for transgression which can help bring change through lessons learnt. Here, of course, everything is bound to go badly awry unless the Force accepts and tackles challenge of crooked traffic cops. There is also the helmet law which, in relatively recent times, appears to have collapsed like the proverbial house of cards under the weight of weak enforcement.
To return to the issue of Defensive Driving it has to be said that participants in such a programme will not, overnight, be necessarily corralled into compliance. If change is to come there will be need for an enhanced awareness of the price we pay for speeding. In other words while Defensive Driving provides a responsible option it cannot, on its own miraculously alter an ingrained mindset. That has to come from an enhanced sense of responsibility.
While, therefore, it may be useful to have drivers attached to state and private sector agencies ‘signed up’ for a Defensive Driver programme the drivers themselves, out of a sense of personal awareness and responsibility and the Police Traffic Department, have to do more.
Defensive driving, incidentally, embodies a set of habits, skills, if you will, that allow drivers to defend themselves against possible collisions resulting from factors like bad drivers, drunk drivers, and poor weather, among others. All of these, significantly, obtain on our roads. In essence it is a matter of ‘doing the right things,’ like looking ahead for the unexpected, speed control, alertness to the need to react to other drivers, being aware of weather conditions and other road use considerations and being aware of distractions like cell phones, babies on board and eating, among other distractions. It is the start of an awareness-enhancing journey that will only take us part of the way. The rest of the trek will require the marshalling of our own individual sense of responsibility coupled with an understanding of the consequences of the decisions that we make. Those, as it happens, are personal decisions.
