Several people have died on our roads this month. Speed bumps and traffic lights do not stop much of the road carnage. The roads should never be like abattoirs, but people have often ended up with their bodies strewn across them, dismembered like the butcher’s kill. Unfortunately, fatal vehicular accidents on Guyana’s roads are not uncommon and the hum from mourning the dead is constant.
I have never forgotten the first fatal accident I witnessed. I was on my way home from school in the mid-1990s. The image of the driver’s dead body hanging through the front of the bus is forever etched in my mind. It is a haunting memory that often surfaces, especially when accidents occur.
A cross planted along the Rupert Craig Highway was also a constant reminder that the actions of drivers often result in devastation. That cross was placed there in the memory of a teenaged girl, Alicea Goveia, who was struck down in 1996 by a driver who was allegedly drunk at the time. It was reported that the driver had a case pending for another person he had struck down and killed some years before.
