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Another person killed on our roads. This time in the worst kind of collision, an alleged hit and run that left a young pedestrian dying in the street. It's always heart-wrenching when someone loses life, especially in a senseless collision. My empathy is with friends and relatives. My anger is reserved for the community leaders who have allowed and even fostered the carnage on our roads.

I'm going to point some fingers.

First, the police. They have promised a number of times that they were going to crack down on speeding. Each time the crack-down has been dropped and fizzled.

The police have no excuse for not fulfilling first their duty, and second the expectations they have given us that they will do something about speeding and reckless driving on our roads. If the police had any limitations, such as inadequate staffing, that would prevent them from keeping their promise, then they should never have made the pledge. I don't want to hear any excuses, and neither do the parents, friends and loved ones of those who have been maimed, crippled or killed on our roads.

You've got a job to do. Find a way to do it, period. If there are external factors that interfere with you doing your job, and you suffer in silence, you are as much to blame as the law-breakers. If you are short-staffed, then start squeaking that wheel until it is greased. If your established compliment hasn't been increased enough to match the increased duties, then let's hear some squawking on that issue.

Then there's the Governor and the PLP Government who seem to be blaming each other for the Police Service's inexcusable laxity in curbing speeders and other traffic scofflaws - notably riders of overly-loud bikes. In passing-the-buck, however, they are both culpable for each life lost on our roads.

The government also has direct responsibility for the speed of its fleets of vehicles. Public buses, for example, are regular speeders.

Premier Dr. Brown bears his share of the blame. Years ago, as Transport Minister, Dr. Brown indulged a PLP trustee by granting him permission to put a car on our roads that violated Bermuda's limits on car size and power. He then indulged his Cabinet colleagues by allowing them cars that were over the size limit. He then used bogus arguments for relaxing the existing limits, thus allowing bigger, more powerful and faster bikes and cars on our roads. His pitch was that bigger vehicles would be safer. The reality is that our roads are more dangerous, especially for people on bikes or on foot.

Contrary to Dr. Brown's comments in 2002, and contrary to local car merchants' sales pitch that Dr. Brown was parroting, car manufacturers were and are making models that fit within Bermuda's size restrictions, especially in Europe.

I am not excusing those individuals whose collisions or demise is triggered by their own stupidity. But the main reason people speed is because they can get away with it. That's why we have laws and that's why enforcement plays the dominant role in adherence to the laws. Enforcement on its own doesn't prevent law-breaking - mainly because some enforcement, like chasing down speeders, takes place after the fact. But when laws are enforced, the bar is raised higher for law-breakers.

And it doesn't help when government leaders set a scofflaw example.

Next week: some solutions.[[In-content Ad]]

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