No appreciation for life anymore

THE EDITOR: The senseless and tragic road death of four-year-old Kimberly Phillip is a stark reminder of the diminishing value of life here in our country.  It seems that not a day goes by without report after report of carnage and death. This is usually accompanied by pictures of dead bodies covered with towels or cardboard or sometimes mangled and trapped in the wreckage of the vehicle. Sometimes, the report is of three or four killed in the same accident.

In some cases the victims are related, father and son, bride and groom, mother and child, cousins or long time friends. In the case of an accident that satisfied many of these characteristics, two married couples, one of them Justice Carlyle Bharath and his wife, were killed instantly and together on the Beetham Highway. At the Curepe/CR intersection two years ago six were killed in one car. Witnesses at this accident reported that blood was flowing out of the crushed vehicle for an hour after the incident until the bodies could be freed and removed. In all of the cases there seems to be a clear pattern:

1) Speed and lawlessness are indicated as a common denominator in the majority of cases. Death is not by accident but by lawless design. The victims are innocent of any infraction and are being murdered by persons who are constantly driving and overtaking  on the shoulder, speeding and racing on any road that they choose, using exit and entrance ramps to go around traffic lights and rushing through traffic signals long after they have turned red.

2) Life is of lesser value today. The continuous reports may have numbed us into a “Punch Drunk” stupor, so that, we are not startled anymore by the sight or the smell of death. Indeed, judging by the response, it seems that those charged with the duty of “saving lives” have a diminished value for life because little effort is being made to stop the senseless slaughter of innocent victims.

In the case of little innocent Kimberly Phillip, she was attempting to cross the road at a point notorious for speeding drivers who use the Bus Stop/Taxi Lay-By to get around the traffic at the Foreshore/Cocorite traffic signal. If these same drivers are not stopped from doing this, there will certainly be more unnecessary and avoidable death to follow Kimberly’s. I sometimes sit in traffic and wonder, who are these “special” citizens that have the privilege to so recklessly endanger life over and over and over again without fear of prosecution? I have never forgotten the two children, little Reanne Diaz and her friend who were both burned to death outside Trincity Mall by a motorist speeding on the shoulder and trying to cut back into the line. It would have been so easy to save those lives... Deaths that are so avoidable.

And what about the number of persons killed by vehicles “jumping” over the median and colliding with on-coming cars? What are these dead guilty of?We are the guilty ones. We have betrayed the memory and the honour of innocence. We have failed to demand that lives be saved and in so doing we would restore value to life. We have come to accept the unnecessary loss of life and to grow comfortable with death. It a mark of shame on our country that angels among us are being killed and there is no end is in sight and no promise that they were not lost in vain.

GREGORY ABOUD
Pt Cumana