Too much speed

Dead are 28-year-old Rodney Seeramsingh, 23-year-old Adam Noel, and 18-year-old Sterlin Cox. Seeramsingh had reportedly crashed his car four times in the previous year and, at the age of 24, had been involved in an accident right on the same stretch at Mosquito Creek. This time, at about two in the morning, he was overtaking another car and crashed head-on into a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. In that car were 25-year-old Vaughn Williams and 28-year-old Yohance Patrick. They, too, are dead.

What could have saved these young men’s lives? Any number of scenarios could have played out. At that hour in the morning, there could not have been any traffic on the Mosquito Creek stretch, so either driver could have paused just a few seconds. Seeramsingh did not have to overtake until the road was quite clear, but it seems he was what is called a "hard driver." And he had his friends in the car to impress. Williams, in the other vehicle, may have been caught by surprise or he might have felt that the fool bearing down on him needed to be shown who was man. But nobody, it seems, was man enough to drive cautiously.

And what about the driver in the third car? Would slowing down to let Seeramsingh cut back in sooner have avoided the collision? Did the third driver, seeing this car overtaking him, speed up instead? Perhaps he felt he needed to teach the hard driver a lesson. Or perhaps, glimpsing a car full of men, he thought it possible that they were bandits and was trying to stay ahead of them. Or perhaps neither thought occurred to the third driver, and the dead drivers just had bad timing. Perhaps the only thing that might have prevented this five-fatality accident was Seeramsingh having his driver’s licence suspended, if he had indeed been in four vehicular accidents within a year.

In the final analysis, however, reducing vehicular accidents depends on changing the attitude of drivers. To some extent, this can be done by law enforcement. Regular handing out of tickets on mornings on the highway, for example, has more or less eliminated the habit drivers had of speeding on the shoulder. But speed traps, on the other hand, have not prevented reckless driving on the highway or on the Priority Bus Route. This is partly because the 80 km speed limit is unreasonable, but it is also because too many drivers here drive aggressively rather than defensively. They also do not take reasonable precautions. The 12-year-old boy who died last week was not wearing a seatbelt, since he was thrown out of the car when his mother lost control of the vehicle and crossed the median, hitting another vehicle on the other side of the highway.

Indeed, so common has this phenomenon become that defensive drivers now have to be alert to what is happening in their own lanes as well as the other one.

A combination of stricter law enforcement and public education can help reduce road fatalities. But every driver ultimately has to take responsibility for their own safety. We can only hope that the avoidable deaths of these five young men, occuring in the second week of the Christmas month, will serve as a grim warning to other people.