Disturbing crash

Our sentiments go even deeper considering their oneyear- old child, Kailee-Ann, orphaned in the blink of an eye.

We are not in the least consoled by the fact that she is too young to understand the tragedy that has befallen her, and would never be able to appreciate Karelle and Kevin as her parents.

We do not wish to be insensitive, but several issues disturb us about this accident. The first is the state of the vehicle following the mishap. Every broken part pointed to horrendous speed, a matter that has so preoccupied national life recently that the police stepped up a campaign to coerce safe driving practices on the roads, going as far as undertaking unprecedented attention to the speed limits on the highways and byways.

Increased police patrols were to be the order of the day, and the much touted electronic speed guns were introduced.

An agitated debate surrounded whether the speed limit on the highways should be increased from the long-standing 80 kph.

One only has to dare travel along the Solomon Hochoy to San Fernando to understand the contempt that drivers have towards speed.

A second point is that the accident occurred close to where a new lane is being constructed on the highway with all manner of warnings of the risks of driving in the area. Surely this would have served to slow traffic, albeit on the other side of the highway, particularly those heading to a popular shopping mart in the area.

Thirdly, the crash occurred in broad daylight, so that visibility from poor lighting could not have been a problem.

Fourthly, the mishap occurred at a time of day when the road would have been overwhelmed in moving vehicles, luckily none of them colliding with the car. Which takes us to our next point of disturbance, the account by witnesses that they saw the vehicle travelling at a high speed, then attempting to make a sudden stop before it crashed. Others said the car spun out of control and flipped several times on the road before coming to a halt in a mangled heap. From every count this was an accident that should not have happened, but it did and the resulting carnage could have been far worse.

Not too far down the road from Sunday’s accident, about five years ago, Appeal Court Judge Wendell Kangaloo was being taken to an early morning horse training jaunt when, in a flash, he and his security detail were sitting amidst a twisted wreck seriously hurt following a car being driven at extremely high speed flipping several times over and landing atop the judge’s vehicle. Three youths who were in the out-of-control car died on the spot. Kangaloo survived his severe trauma for just one year.

This takes us right back to the reasons for our disturbance over Sunday’s accident: why was this vehicle travelling so fast in an area overwhelmed by competing traffic that it flipped several times before coming to a stop? Could there not have been a police patrol somewhere along this highway that could have picked up an errant driver, or are these patrols off on a Sunday? What is the latest with the speed guns? Civic-minded groups like Arrive Alive and the Automobile Association continue doing yeoman service to render our roads safe, but is anyone listening to prevent incidents like Sunday’s disturbing crash