Had 42 persons, including 18 children, been slaughtered by bandits in a criminal massacre, there would most likely have been demands for inquiries from civil society, howls of outrage from the joint opposition parties and prayers for the departed from the religious community. But this was precisely the number of pedestrians killed on Guyana’s unruly roadways in 2009. Yet, the gruesome death toll seemed to have provoked no public alarm or official remedial reaction.
Pedestrians constitute the leading category of all persons killed in road accidents. They are this country’s most vulnerable road users and run the greatest risk of injury or death. Last year, of the 116 road deaths, more than 36 per cent, were pedestrians. Every month, three or four pedestrians – most of them either very young or very old – are killed on the roads.
An examination of the most dangerous roadways indicates that the East Bank of Demerara’s Houston-McDoom-Agricola-Eccles-Bagotstown ‘alley of death’ connecting the capital city with the international airport claimed a disproportionate number of victims. Most were struck down while attempting to cross the public road.
The greatest number of road deaths for 2009 occurred in ‘A’ division – which includes the notorious East Bank corridor and Soesdyke-Linden highway – with a tally of 23 deaths; ‘B’ Division – on the West Coast of Berbice and the Corentyne Coast – with 22 deaths; and ‘C’ division – on the East Coast of Demerara – with 25 deaths.
Outside of Georgetown, sidewalks (or pavements) are rare. Apart from the absence of sidewalks, many streets do not have marked crossings and there is no earthly indication of where or how pedestrians are expected to cross to the other side. Zebra crossings, where they exist, are frequently faded and unmarked by flashing yellow lights at night. But most rural ‘public roads’ are really main streets that run through populated villages and there lurks the danger.
Too frequently, grass verges tend to be uneven, stony, muddy or encumbered by builders’ waste and vendors’ stalls thus forcing pedestrians to walk on the motorways. There they must compete with moving vehicles for space amidst domestic animals, parked or broken-down vehicles and heaps of sand or mud. Several rural public roads have been resurfaced but not made safer. None seems ever to have been re-designed with either the pedestrians’ safety and convenience or the characteristically discourteous road culture in mind.
In the city’s central business district, storeowners have taken to constructing concrete ramps on top of municipal sidewalks to avoid flooding from clogged gutters during heavy rainfall. They also park shipping containers – as in Robb, Regent and Holmes streets for example – on a semi-permanent basis. These commercial malpractices make sidewalks impassable by infirm pedestrians and others in wheelchairs. In the city as in the countryside, intrepid pedestrians must try their luck on the motorways.
The US$2.1 M, solar-powered traffic lights which were installed with great expectations only three years ago briefly brought order to the urban traffic scene. Mercifully, some were equipped with ‘walk’ and ‘don’t walk’ signs which were helpful to pedestrians. Disappointingly, they have now started to malfunction. Dangerously, when there are no signals to safeguard pedestrian safety, confusion and danger prevail.
Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy last November announced that road accidents were the seventh leading cause of all deaths. He pointed out that the real tragedy is that not a single road death should occur since it is something that is preventable. “In Guyana virtually all of our families have somebody that died before their time, we have somebody living with disability because of accidents. That is unacceptable.”
So, what is the administration going to do about pedestrians’ deaths?
