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Driver mentality on our roads is shifting rapidly from order to anarchy. The result is maiming and killing our children and adults.

Just this past week we saw the latest chapter in the saga of children being injured and even killed on our roads. This past weekend we heard of a couple of dozen accidents, sixteen taking place within four hours, that put a half dozen people in hospital with serious injuries.

People are careening around on our roads, for example, routinely travelling at almost twice the speed limit, even when road conditions and visibility deteriorate in bad weather; overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic; and tailgating.

It’s time our leaders took effective action. And as long as they seem not to have the spine enough to put a cap on vehicles, then we must insist they at least return civility to our roadways.

Sure, let’s have some education. In addition to driving behaviour I’d add: Turning lights on at ‘lighting up time’; dipping headlights for oncoming traffic; giving greater distance between vehicles, not less, as speed increases.

Let’s also educate our planners and sports field owners to shield stadium lights so they don’t shine into the eyes of vehicle operators.

Legislation would also help: Reconcile the legal speed limit with the enforced limit; make it a crime to kill someone with a car.

But the big deal is enforcement — the lack of it. It is irresponsible and blatantly negligent that Bermuda’s speed limit is being set by the lack of enforcement rather than the laws on our books.

I did hear police spokesperson Mr. Caines saying that the rash of weekend accidents was “eye-opening”.

Frankly, the police and government leaders should have seen this coming. The accelerating rate of accidents and injuries was entirely predictable.

It was predictable that as vehicles got bigger, the space between them — as they pass each other, and between them and the roadsides — would shrink. It follows that there would be a greater likelihood of collisions between vehicles, and between vehicles and roadside walls.

As speeds increase, the time to react decreases, thus it was predictable that collisions would increase in frequency. At the faster speeds, it was predictable that collisions would cause more damage to vehicles and people, particularly little people.

It was predictable that as speeds are allowed to increase far above the legal limit, the sense of lawful road-use behaviour would be compromised, and a scofflaw attitude would take hold toward, not just speeding, but all traffic laws.

It is predictable that the longer this scofflaw attitude is permitted, the more entrenched it will become. This is one genie that will be extremely difficult to put back in the bottle.

While the police weren’t responsible for permitting larger cars, they, along with our elected and appointed leaders, are the prime culprits in our current situation. Traffic behaviour has got out of control, and while it is fashionable to admonish the public and call for greater education, the bottom line is that traffic is controlled by the devices and agents of control.

As the density of traffic on our roads has increased, so has the need for controls. We went from virtually control-free roads to stop and yield signs to traffic lights to speed control bumps in the roads.

Alongside the increase in traffic control devices, there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in traffic patrols.

And whether the lapse is that of the Governor, who has overall responsibility for the police, of the Minister for Public Safety and the rest of the collectively-responsible cabinet, or of the police themselves, we really don’t care.

I think the entire community wants them, individually, collectively or whatever, to do something, and to do it now!

Our leaders must get up off of their status quos and do whatever it takes to return civil conduct to our roadways.

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