In its annual demonstration of self-congratulation, the Guyana Police Force Officers’ Conference last March showered encomiums on the Traffic Department for its “success” in reducing the number of fatalities in 2008, compared with 2007. The police officers also praised the positive impact of their own road safety campaign − Operation Safeway.
The gory reality of road fatality soon confuted the cheerful conference hall day dreams as newspapers painted a grisly picture of deaths caused by dangerous driving. Just one week after the end of the conference, an 18-year-old girl of Pouderoyen, WBD, was killed when she was struck down by a mini-bus while she was riding her bicycle on the Schoon Ord public road on the West Bank Demerara. Earlier in the year, a 12-year-old girl was killed while she was standing on the sidewalk on the Agricola public road on the East Bank Demerara and a 13-year-old girl was killed on the Number 72 village public road on the Corentyne.
Analysis shows that a disproportionate number of victims this year have been bicyclists and pedestrians who were killed on rural public roads − at Bath, WCB; Vreed-en-Hoop, WBD; Agricola, Mc Doom, Grove and Soesdyke, EBD; Kuru Kururu on the Soesdyke-Linden highway; and Number 79 Village and Crabwood Creek, on the Corentyne Coast. The trends are clear.
Such a bloody record cannot warrant celebration and congratulation. Despite the temporary decline in the death tolls and Operation Safeway’s so-called “success,” it is obvious that fundamental changes to make the roads safer − especially for pedestrians and cyclists, the most vulnerable road users – have never been introduced. At the human level, also, cold statistics obscure the untold disabilities and lifelong injuries of the survivors, the uncounted cost of hospitalisation and the lost earnings of the victims. The sheer number of fatalities is not a reliable gauge of road safety.
The reasons for the rate of deaths on rural public roads are not difficult to discern. These roads run through heavily populated villages but are often unlit at night. Most have no sidewalks and the verges are stony, muddy or encumbered by vendors’ stalls thus forcing bicyclists and pedestrians onto the motorways. There they must compete with cars, horse-drawn carts, motorcycles, stray dogs, farm animals, parked or broken-down vehicles and piles of sand or mud.
Rural public roads seem never to have been re-designed for this country’s peculiar volume and variety of traffic and the vagaries of road misbehaviour. Most of the admirable markings laid on for the Cricket World Cup Competition 2007 have now faded and the traffic police seem to have no policy for illuminating pedestrian crossings and other standard safety features.
The biggest contributory factor to fatalities, perhaps, has been drivers’ dangerous driving habits. Some, especially drivers of commercial vehicles and minibuses, simply do not have the skill, experience or temperament to be entrusted with responsibility for human lives on public roads. Many drive defective or overloaded vehicles recklessly or at unsafe speeds and display aggressive behaviour and poor road discipline.
The reduction in fatalities has been fleeting. By mid-April this year, road deaths had already exceeded last year’s toll for a similar period by 25 per cent. The Guyana Police Force should leave celebrations to the public. On the question of road safety, it should concentrate on acquiring more devices for identifying drunk and speeding drivers and on re-designing public roads for safety. Feral drivers should be retrained, re-examined, re-licensed and required to satisfy a higher performance standard than others.
Too many persons are still losing their lives on account of dangerous driving.
