The moving finger writes

Though your car may appear to be mechanically sound, it should be checked frequently for that death-dealing defect which is common to many vehicles now being operated in Trinidad and Tobago. I mean that loose nut . . . behind the wheel. At the risk of ridicule, I wish to go on record as saying that many Trinidad drivers are good drivers. Go ahead and laugh . . . but I maintain they have to be good to stay alive in this mad mobile maelstrom of truck, buses, bicycles and taxis. Oh those taxis . . . wicked weapons wielded by some of the world’s wildest, weirdest and most unpredictable operators who think nothing of stopping without warning, turning into traffic without signalling, opening doors on the traffic side, cutting in, passing on the wrong side . . . in short, pulling every shabby, shady trick that is contrary to the basic rules of good driving.

And there are some drivers, not only taxi operators either, who don’t appear to have the slightest idea where the dip switch is located. I venture to suggest there are cars which, throughout their entire lives, from showroom to scrap heap, have been operated in Trinidad and Tobago with headlights frozen on high beam. One would think that the dipper switch in such vehicles was wired to a charge of dynamite, judging from the operator’s reluctance to use it. Then there are the bicycles . . . two wheeled terrors, brazening out their avowed middle of the road policy, two or three abreast . . . the lumbering buses, smoking more, while you enjoy it less . . . and the mope. In his own quiet way, the mope is as big a menace as the speed merchant. He is the slow driver who holds her down to 20 either because he is unsure of himself and has no business being on the highway in the first place or (and this is more likely) because his car is such a beaten-up wreck that it isn’t capable of going much faster without the fenders flying off. So he crawls along, piling up a backlog of impatient drivers who soon begin to jockey for position to get by . . . ofttimes taking chances that the car coming from the opposite direction is not as close as it appears to be. I wish I had a dollar for every collision caused in the course of a year by the mope.

Then we have that major menace . . . that prominent peril . . . the drinking driver . . . the operator who, with reflexes slowed and judgment anaesthetised, sits behind the wheel of a two tonne juggernaut and says to his trusting passengers, “Don’t worry about a thing. Sure I’ve had a few drinks, but as soon as I start to drive I sober right up.” Rubbish . . . dangerous, deadly rubbish! Lethal lies! Bloody balderdash! I use the word “bloody” in its literal rather than profane sense, referring to that which accompanies the agony which attends the many high speed accidents in which drinking drivers are involved. You may boast that you can hold your liquor. But there is only one safe way to hold your liquor when you are responsible for the navigation of your vehicle, and that is the bottle it comes in. Do you know what happens when two solid objects come together at high speed? Have you any idea what goes on which steel and glass, flesh and blood are fused into one pulpy mass in those last split seconds when a human being is hurled into eternity?

Let us suppose that you are driving on the highway at 55 kilometres per hour. That’s five kilometres above the legal limit in Trinidad and Tobago which is a pretty conservative estimate for most of today’s drivers. Two cars are coming from the opposite direction and one is in your lane. It can’t get back to its own side of the road . . . there isn’t time. You have one chance . . . hit the ditch. You pull the wheel over . . . there is a pole ahead. You can’t stop! Now let’s reconstruct in slow motion, exactly what will happen: In the first tenth of a second the front bumper and the grillwork will collapse and slivers of steel will penetrate the pole to a depth of 1-? inches. In the second tenth of the second the hood crumples as it rises, smashing into the windscreen. The grillwork disintegrates completely. Spinning rear wheels leave the ground. The fenders make contact with the pole, forcing the rear parts of the car to fan out over the front doors.

The heavy structural members now begin to act as a brake on the tremendous forward motion of the body, but your body continues to move forward at the vehicle’s original speed. The force is twenty times gravity and your body weighs three thousand two hundred pounds. Your legs snap at the knee joints. In the third tenth of a second your body is off the seat, torso upright, broken knees pressing against the dashboard. The plastic and steel frame of the steering wheel begins to bend under your terrible death grip. Your head is near the sun visor, your chest over the steering column. In the fourth tenth of a second, the car’s front twenty four inches have been completely demolished but the rear end is still travelling at 35 miles per hour. Your body is still going at 55. The half tonne motor block crunches into the pole and the rear of the car rises like a bucking horse. Half a second has now elapsed. Your fear-frozen hands bend the steering column into an almost vertical position. The force of gravity impales you on the steering shaft. Jagged steel punctures lungs and arteries. In the sixth tenth of a second your feet are ripped from tightly laced shoes. The brake pedal shears off at the floor boards. The chassis bends in the middle and your head smashes into the windscreen.

Now the rear of the car comes down . . . spinning wheels digging into the ground. The entire, writhing body is forced out of shape. Hinges tear, doors spring open, the seat rams forward pinning against the cruel steel of the steering shaft. Blood leaps from your mouth. Shock has frozen your heart. You are dead. Elapsed time . . . seven tenths of one second. And that is an accurate, slow motion picture of high speed death . . . not pretty is it? But then, most fatal accidents aren’t. There are many people to watch on the roads of Trinidad and Tobago if you would survive . . . and the one to watch more closely than any other is the driver just behind the driver immediately ahead of you! If the steering wheel of your car could talk, this is what it might say: “I am just a wheel, and you are my captain. Behind me you are lord and master of a miracle. You can make me take the children to school, turn me down the sunny road to town, guide your goods to market. You can rush the injured to be healed, go in minutes to places that once were hours away. With me you can do magic.

“Yet in the blink of an eye, in the tick of your watch, I can turn deadly killer. I can twist a smile into tears. I can wreck and cripple and destroy. I can deal out death like the plague. I am no respecter of persons . . . a child, a grandmother, even you, my friend . . . it’s all the same to me. Yet I am sensitive. I respond instantly to the hands you give me. “Give me calm hands, steady hands, careful hands and I am your friend. But give me fuzzy-minded hands, reckless hands, then I am your enemy, a menace to the life, the happiness, the future of every person riding, walking, playing. “I am just a steering wheel. I was made for pleasure and usefulness. But you are the captain. Behind me you are the lord and master of a miracle . . . or a tragedy. I am in your hands.” And so . . . the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. Nor all your piety not wit can lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out one word of it.