Last week, Traffic Chief Linden Isles surprised nobody – except arguably President David Granger who may be less familiar with the data on fatal traffic accidents than the rest of us. In fact he could have saved himself the trouble and the taxpayers money if he had not set up a Commission of Inquiry into a head-on collision on the East Bank road last month involving a police vehicle and a car driven by a member of the GDF. As it was there was no great mystery to be uncovered, since eyewitnesses and CCTV footage were available to the GPF on that occasion. The commission found that the accident which ended in five fatalities had been caused by excessive speeding on the part of the police.
And now the Traffic Chief has told the nation that driving under the influence, or DUI as it is known, along with speeding have been the leading causes of fatal traffic accidents this year. Traversing the roadways as they do on a daily basis, members of the public hardly need that confirmed by the Traffic Department; they can see it first-hand for themselves.
During a presentation on Christmas policing plans, Superintendent Isles also told the media that as of November 10 there had been a recorded 4% drop in accidents and a 6% decrease in deaths when compared to the same period last year. Whether that represents any kind of meaningful improvement is very debatable, since the raw figures were 87 accidents and 100 deaths last year, as opposed to 84 accidents and 94 deaths for the comparable period this year.
In addition, it should be pointed out that one or two fatal accidents may have escaped the Department’s tally. The Traffic Chief said that no deaths had been recorded thus far for the year in Regions One, Seven and Eight, although according to this newspaper’s records there have been fatal accidents in One and Seven during the period in question.
Superintendent Isles also told citizens about the most dangerous stretches of road in the Republic. That information would also not have come as too much of a surprise, since Guyana’s arterial network is very limited indeed, and certain stretches of thoroughfare lend themselves more readily to speeding than do others. Heading the list for the highest number of deaths was Eccles to Moblissa in Region Four, which recorded 25. It was followed by Region Six with 15 deaths, and then Agricola to Cummings Lodge, again in Region Four, with 13. Region Four once again made its appearance in the top four, with Industry to west of the Mahaica Bridge registering 10 deaths. Regions Two, Three, Five, Nine and Ten had below ten deaths, said the Traffic Chief.
The really critical matter is that the major causes of our fatal accidents have not changed since last year or the year before that − or many years before that. As said above, the two primary ones are DUI combined with speeding, and these, said Superintendent Isles, accounted for almost 90% of them. Between October 5 and November 4, this newspaper reported on several deaths caused by DUI and/or speeding. They included a twenty-four-year-old mother of four hit by a drunken driver on the East Bank; two Lindeners who died in a head-on collision in Amelia’s Ward; a young driver who crashed into a parked vehicle on the East Coast road; an Essequibo resident who was struck by an alleged speeding car at Onderneeming; and another Essequibian fatally hit by an alleged drunken driver at Evergreen.
The police have made little impact on the situation partly because they have never implemented a sustained approach to traffic violations – every approach inevitably involves a temporary campaign − partly because of the pernicious tradition of the ‘raise’ which is particularly prevalent in the Traffic section, and partly because Guyana’s finest are not themselves above reproach where contraventions of the Highway Code are concerned. The case cited earlier which ended in five deaths was caused by a speeding police vehicle, for example.
But there is another underlying problem, and that is the alcohol culture of this society. In the days when there were few cars on the road, there were by definition fewer drunken drivers, although inebriation had consequences elsewhere in the society, such as on domestic violence rates. The problem is that so many people do not perceive driving under the influence as a true criminal offence. While getting into a car while staggering drunk will no doubt be perceived as something to be discouraged, there are stages before that is reached where imbibing will have impaired judgement and compromised driving skills, yet these earlier states do not attract very much if any attention.
Drinking is the recreation of choice for a large segment of the population of whatever race and class. Changing the culture so that drivers decide not to get behind a wheel if they have more than a certain alcohol level in their bloodstream will not be an easy task. One suspects too that the police themselves think nothing of having a drink or two before switching on the ignition in their own vehicles, and are hardly likely therefore to challenge the ordinary citizen on those grounds. It is simply, as said before, a reflection of the culture.
British drivers are nowadays very careful to drink only very small amounts or not at all before they clamber into their cars. If they are looking for a night of carousing, they invariably make sure they have a designated driver or head home by taxi or some other form of public transport. However, it was not always so. It took a fairly lengthy, consistent campaign by the police armed with breathalysers which could test drivers on the roadside and then take them to court if they were in default, before changes in habits started to be evinced.
Significantly there was not a word from the Traffic Chief about what programme his Department was working on to reduce the number of fatalities caused by DUI. A reduction in these cases would also impact the speeding problem to some extent. As it was, his figures ended with November 10. While one would hope to be proven wrong, it is hard to avoid the feeling that only an irredeemable optimist would believe we will completely escape accidents caused by drunken driving over the Christmas season.