Madness on our roads

TRANSPORT COMMISSIONER Nathaniel Douglas says his department has decided to move against maxi taxis and other private vehicles using sirens and flashing lights on our roads. To that announcement, we say better late than never. We find it surprising, however, that the Commissioner and his officers have only now become aware of this illegal practice.

To illustrate the absurdity of this situation let us quote Mr John Henry of Diego Martin who relates his experience in a letter to this newspaper published on Friday. "Yesterday morning I found myself stuck in a traffic jam in the area of the Wallerfield Road leading towards Valencia. Upon hearing a siren, which I assumed to belong to a police car, I duly pulled aside to make room for the vehicle to pass. To my amazement the sounds of the siren were in fact coming from a red band maxi taxi whose driver was using this illegal device to dupe law abiding citizens like myself into making room to pass the long line of traffic on the outside. "As you are aware, the recent kidnapping of two young men in the Port-of-Spain area was carried out by bandits posing as police officers using a similar type siren and blue flashing lights." This kind of aggressive impudence is typical of the "culture" that maxi taxis have established on the roads of our country. Their brutish disregard for other road users has met with little or no condemnation or prosecutory action by the authorities and so they have become a virtual law unto themselves. Now they have taken to using sirens to scare motorists into moving aside to let them pass. We have said repeatedly before that nowhere is the indiscipline of our society demonstrated more blatantly on a daily basis than in the way we drive or use the roads of our country. We are weary of inveighing on the obsession with speed which remains unabated inspite of the horrendous smash-ups and the gruesome slaughter that results from it. The graphic picture on our front page yesterday tells another of these senselessly tragic stories. The mangled wreckage of a Galant car is wrapped around a tree off the Churchill Roosevelt Highway at Mausica, a horrifying legacy of the unquenchable thirst for speed. The driver who lost control of the car and his companion, sitting on the front seat with him, were killed instantly.

And so the madness goes on. We have appealed ad nauseam to the authorities to take the necessary action to curb the reckless indiscipline on our roads, to restore law and order on our highways, but these exhortations have fallen on deaf ears. The reaction, as we have seen it, is one of frustration, that nothing can really be done about this dreadful situation. The plan to put a fleet of patrol cars on the highways has apparently falled by the wayside. Or is it that the Traffic Police, with whatever mobility they now have, are really not concerned with stopping or catching the offenders? The illegal and dangerous practice of drag racing which has been going on at Cross Crossing, San Fernando, for quite a long time seems to tell us so. Two southern doctors have informed Newsday that drag racing has been taking place at this site with the knowledge and apparent permission of the Police. In any case, how could they not have known about an event that attracted large crowds of young people to Cross Crossing late on Saturday nights and early on Sunday mornings? And how could parents have allowed their children, including teens and pre-teens, to be out so late watching this hazardous form of racing on the highway? These "meetings" were a disaster waiting to happen and it seemed miraculous that when it did happen none of the young spectators were fatally injured. Maxis with sirens, reckless drivers, drag racing — the lawlessness on our roads; when will it be seriously tackled?