Stop the speed demons

WITHIN a few hours of leaving the drag racing event at Wallerfield on Sunday evening, three Arouca teenagers lost their lives out of the lust for speed. As the investigating Police told us, 18-year-old Hesan Hosein must have been acting out a fantasy after the Wallerfield racing, while driving home around 8.30 pm on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway. In any case, the circumstances in which he, his sister Shado, 16, and their cousin Keshan, 18, met their deaths indicate that Hesan must have been flying low on the stretch near Trincity when he lost control of his Honda Civic. Apparently he swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle, then attempted to avoid crashing a culvert overlooking the nearby ravine. Now out of control, the car flew off the road, soared 129 feet across a nearby ravine, smashing into the opposite bank before tumbling 20 feet into the murky waters below.

The car, as seen in our photograph, was a totally mangled wreck. Passers by managed to pull the three teenagers out of the wreckage, but Hesan and Shado were already dead, while Keshan was pronounced dead on arrival at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital. The missile-like trajectory of the car as it leapt off the highway could only have been the result of extraordinary speed. To fly over that distance, said the Police, the vehicle had to be travelling at more than 150 kilometres an hour. It was a case of “pure speed” which the driver could not control. Deep frustration, not unmixed with a sense of anger, are not the normal reactions to such a tragedy, but we find it difficult to avoid them now, given the mounting number of lives being senselessly lost on our roads because drivers will not curb their lust for speed.

What is this frantic hurry about? Why are drivers willing to risk their lives and those of their passengers by this reckless indulgence? What difference would it make to them, if the speed demons were to drive more responsibly and arrive at their destinations a little while later? Trinidad is a small island and most of the drivers who regularly use our highways are not on long journeys, hardly ever travelling beyond the urban centres of Port-of-Spain, San Fernando and Arima. Driving safely, out of the peak traffic times, one can connect between these centres within an hour or so. In this context, speeding becomes a hazardous and totally irresponsible offence, calling for constant surveillance, stern law enforcement and harsh penalties. But that is a response the authorities seem reluctant or incapable of providing, in spite of the rising death toll on our roads due in large measure to excessive speeding.

It remains a mystery to us why the Government, in spite of all its pious promises, cannot provide the necessary measures to bring order and conformity to our roads and so protect the lives of law-abiding commuters. In countries much larger than ours, dangerous driving, including speeding on highways, is not only strictly prohibited but the law against it is rigidly enforced. Our Government cannot make the excuse of lack of funds or insufficient manpower for not placing the required police surveillance and patrols on our highways to deal with this kind of indiscipline which has almost become a kind of culture. From long and bloody experience, we know only that level of enforcement can make our highways safe. Perhaps the proceeds of our present oil windfall will provide the wherewithal.