Dear Editor,
The PPP Government is preparing to get a law passed to curb speeding. Good! I applaud, curtsy before Minister Robeson Benn. The fine for speeders is going to be GY$7,500. Bad! Very bad, sir. Too meager. Sober Guyanese would say scanty. The small people in Guyana cannot afford a car, good deals, and sweet repayment packages. But hard charging, hard drinking Guyanese could care less about a paltry $7,500. Even for a seatbelt violation, $7,500 is nothing. People will pay, continue to play with speeding and drinking. Where there are no surveillance cameras, it would be cheaper to negotiate a cut on the fine with the attending rank, and cut out wasting time in court. If I rubbed Minister Benn’s nerves raw by slurring his people, I assure him that no harm is intended. Truth has its price, and enemies also. Trot out the speed law, but make it $15,000 for a start, for repeat offenders, it should be $100,000. Look at the range of fines for drinking and driving: from $30,000 to $200,000. That’s talking seriously, the higher end, of course.
Regarding drinking and driving, a big hand for Traffic Chief Mahendra Singh: in five months, 237 drivers were fined for drunk driving. Wait, is ‘suh’ much rum Guyanese ‘duz’ drink? Even more alarming, according to the Traffic Chief, a total of 510 drivers were charged, but only 237 were
successfully prosecuted. I repeat my question: are there this many Guyanese drinking and driving, smirking at the law and slower, sober drivers? Five hundred and ten drinking and driving vehicle operators in five months on Guyana’s already dangerous roads is a hundred a month, with more on weekends, for approximately three inebriated drivers on the roads daily. This is chilling. I give perspective. A female veterinary worker visited my home recently with a foot cast on. It was her first day back after 5-6 weeks on the mend, with a long way to go. She is the victim of a drunk driver at around midday on a weekday, with fracture(s) and pain for company. Being out of bread, too. The resourceful driver left the scene, settled with the taxi this lady was in, but was playing hardball with the injured passenger. The latter is another story to be addressed (insurance, police practices, court proceedings, out-of-court settlements, impoverished drivers, MIA drivers, and so forth) on another day. Should anyone think I am some temperance warrior, start over. Green bottles and top shelf represent a poor man aspiring high. The duty is to pick time and place.
Now for some more on drinking and driving. I have heard falling down drunk drivers swear of being soberer than a judge. They don’t know Guyana. Some who can’t walk a straight line or speak straight (like political players) insist that the breathalyzer equipment was made wrong, or the curvature of the road was flawed, or a bridge shouldn’t be where it is. If it is not the fault of the police, it is the incompetence of the engineers. Third, drivers who later claim sobriety somehow find it convenient to make themselves scarce in the aftermath of an accident, even with a citizen breathing her last. Why was instantaneous flight necessary, if sober? Fourth, there is another practice that is unique to Guyana: it is the switching of drivers, i.e., a sober passenger for one drooling over himself, smelling like a distillery. Villagers and others have caught on to that one fairly quickly. Fifth, taking account, my concern now has to do with money. For injury and loss of income, for death and loss of breadwinner by spouse and children. These are the physical and financial ones, then there are the psychological ones that haunt. As is now an accepted fact of life, the rich and connected have their own standard of what justice should be, how much just compensation, if any is, and only if they are tracked down. The rich can buyout from the police to the court system to the victims themselves, if they [drunk and speeding drivers] care. Knowing the local environment well, the loaded drunk driver swiftly concludes that a million for the family of a mowed down minimum wage worker is a big haul, and a pittance for the offender. This is what I fear. In contrast, the system could operate perfectly, but when it is a hand-to-mouth drunk and speeding driver, grief-stricken family members have more pain to deal with, as they are left in the cold. Nothing to get, no recourse to compensation for their loss. Do what is powerful. Deliver serious deterrents.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
