Orangestein deadly crash

Dear Editor,

The recent newspaper article, “Father, baby perish in Orangestein crash”, highlights a deeply troubling incident that exposes the consequences of reckless driving and poor enforcement of traffic laws. According to the Police, the truck driver’s actions were unbelievably reckless.

What happened was the driver decided to turn a vehicle meant for transportation into a weapon of death. This tragedy underscores the urgent need to address both individual negligence and systemic issues in road safety enforcement.

Who in their right mind attempts a U-turn across a highway like that with active traffic? That’s the kind of manoeuvre that gets people killed, and tragically, that’s exactly what happened here: a father and a three-month-old baby were dead on the road. It’s beyond irresponsible; it is criminal and must be treated as such by the prosecuting authorities.

And honestly, this raises a bigger question: who is actually enforcing the traffic code in Guyana? If trucks, cars, and minibuses are casually pulling U-turns across a main road near a shopping area, that suggests either poor road design, inadequate enforcement, or drivers acting with impunity without fear of consequences.

Do any drivers now respect the traffic Police? This is the consequence of years of an attitude of “Leave a thing for yourself, boy, nah.” The roosters are now coming home; we are quickly approaching the point of outright road usage dysfunctionality.

Yes, the Police say the motorcyclist was allegedly speeding and overtook on double solid lines, which is also dangerous and illegal. But that doesn’t make the truck’s manoeuvre acceptable.

No vehicle, especially a large commercial vehicle, should be swinging across traffic lanes like that, especially near a mall entrance where visibility and traffic flow are unpredictable. Could he not have backed in and allowed his front to face the road so he could have seen both sides of the traffic?

This situation shows a total systemic failure:

1) Poor traffic control around commercial entrances

2) Weak enforcement of road rules

3) No margin for error when motorcycles are involved

And the result? A family destroyed. A baby died. A mother in surgery.

What makes it even more frustrating is that this type of crash is preventable, but it is now happening so often in Guyana that the statistics show we are killing more of our people on the road than from murders in close environments.

The entire system has turned on its head. Basic traffic discipline and proper road management could stop tragedies like this from happening in the first place. Why are we all in such a hurry? A five-minute delay to line up our truck to see both sides of the traffic from the front could have saved lives.

People should not be dying because someone thought, “I’ll just cut across the road quickly.”

That’s not a minor mistake; it’s life-and-death negligence. Unfortunately, those who are suffering the most are the poor and the working class, a class of people that Dr Cheddi Jagan fought and struggled for generations. Is this how we want to remember his work in the month of Cheddi Jagan? When will it end? Where is the systematic fix? When is the systemic fix happening?

As a final point to reflect on, can we imagine that we, as a society, have just collectively ended the life of a child who might have been a world-class petroleum engineer who would have been guiding our nation proudly to better benefit from our natural wealth below the sea? What a waste of an innocent child’s life!