OUR PARLIAMENT will soon be reviewing proposed massive increases in penalties for traffic violations. Those behind this latest burden point to carelessness and
recklessness of our drivers, resulting in what everybody claims is responsible for the carnage on the roads: speeding.
“Several decades ago, however, after analysing relevant research, Dr Ernest Dicther, director of the Institute of Motivational Research, announced that accidents aren’t caused from a logical decision to speed. He said most accidents are the result of a
series of emotional states experienced by the driver.
“This country is so blanketed with stress, depression and just the inability to cope with the myriad challenges of everyday living, it would not be too farfetched
to believe that most of us are distracted while driving.
“It cannot be disputed, however, that the faster one is driving, the greater the injuries and damage.
“When I was a boy, bicycles had to be licensed and a headlamp affixed to the handle.
Today – with our thoroughfares far more busy and our vehicles much faster – this useful piece of equipment has been abandoned.
The result is a massive increase in the deaths and maiming of pedal cyclists. This has nothing to do with speeding.
“So the exhortation by Dr Lucien Jones and traffic personnel is that we cut down
on speeding and carelessness on the road. That’s good. But what of the contribution of faulty road design and poor road maintenance to the number of deaths on the road? Can a road, built in the 1960s, be safe and suitable today when vehicles are more, faster and different?
DEFICIENT ROADS
“A few years ago, I put this question to a vacationing civil engineer with special training in road construction. His conclusion after a week on our roads was that he observed many examples of poor and outdated highway design. He gave as examples
intersections or sections of highways with a history of collisions; lack of proper traffic
signs and signals; hazardous highway conditions caused by weather conditions such as
puddles of water; lack of guard rails on curves or along steep embankments; lack of shoulders or insufficient shoulder width.
“Last week, a prominent doctor was on TV telling the painful story of seeing a pothole on
Waterloo Road, being concerned, calling the relevant authorities, getting no response, and losing her only son to that same pothole.
I have watched small cracks in the road that were ignored as they grew into large potholes where, on three occasions that I know, lives were lost.
“The police are not engineers. It would be unfair to expect them, during their investigations, to properly analyse the cause of an accident. Insurance companies
use police reports to evaluate fault and blame. This leaves victims of an accident powerless in the process.
ROAD DESIGN DEFECT LAWYERS
The country is now flooded with lawyers. I think there is a great need for road design defect lawyers to seek liability from those responsible for a road defect or poor maintenance.
“Road design defect lawyers may be the only people who will think of checking for roadway defects as a cause for collision.
It is time we move away from this simplistic determination of our traffic accidents as being the result of just speed. A pedal cyclist, riding at night without a light, is a suicide in waiting. A pothole on a highway is a death trap. Pedestrians, forced to compete with cyclists and motorists on poorly lit roads, are at serious risk. The person facing
the loss of his home, business or job is likely to make bad driving decisions. This can only be exacerbated by faulty road design and poor road maintenance.
Maybe out of this large windfall we could persuade our new masters – the IMF – to allow us to do a proper assessment of our road design and effect repairs on a timely basis before our roads take more lives.
– Glenn Tucker is an educator and sociologist.