2008-03-31

Road safety scapegoating

VSB has finally launched a website. However, I think they're better off taking it down until they actually have some content. That is, pages that weren't written by someone just learning HTML and playing with funky colour palettes... anyway.

Let's see. We had some major road traffic incidents recently, some with catastrophic results. However I don't like the knee-jerk reaction to these as far as their responses having nothing to do with curbing Bermuda's driving culture.

First, a young man was killed when the bike he was on as a passenger was in a traffic collision. Immediately, everybody's saying that we need to curb the rights of young riders.

Then, a visiting woman from the U.S. dies as a result of striking a truck while on her rental cycle. Now, it's everybody saying that we need to be more stringent when it comes to renting bikes. Some have gone far enough to call for the ban of rental bikes to visitors.

Meanwhile, every freaking day we have actual residents who are *not* 16 years old, involved in these so-called "accidents". We have guys overtaking BUSES around CORNERS and striking BUSES from the other direction. What now?

The Road Safety Council, Government and the people at large don't seem to understand. It's not one particular group of road users who are causing all these collisions and forcing our insurance payments through the roof, among other things. It is residents of Bermuda who are doing all this foolishness on the roads.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know I sound like a cracked record, but if you allow these people to buy/hire a car instead of a bike they probably wouldn't be dead.

Bermuda has the slowest speed limit in the western world and the highest fatality rate.

YAL.

Tryangle said...

Trust me, nobody's experiencing cracked-record syndrome more than me when it comes to talking about our driving culture :-)