Finally, action?

It's extremely overdue, and several lives have unfortunately been lost in the interim, but there's the actual prospect of action being taken by the Road Safety Council that's not lip service or the like being considered now.

I trust that they'll actually pay attention to the statistics and what members of the public are trying to say regarding what's wrong and what's needed to try to change the culture of recklessness(TM) when it comes to Bermuda's roads.

That means: no knee-jerk reactions to a teenager crashing and wanting to crackdown on all teen riders. No knee-jerk reactions to a tourist crashing and wanting to crackdown on all tourists who want to rent a scooter.

It means: focus on the things that are causing this chaos. Particularly:

• driving under the influence
• third-lane riding
• total lack of using indicators
• ignoring stop signs and traffic lights
• failure of the public to understand protocol for intersections, roundabouts and pedestrian crossings
• not paying attention to pedal cyclists and pedestrians particularly at corners
• cell phone abuse, especially when combined with one of the above

Also, recognising finally that it's grown adults who are causing the majority of these incidents, not teenagers, not tourists, not the elderly. Grown men and women who live here.

What actions need to be taken?

• Book people who violate any of the above. That means have officers at intersections in and outside of town prepared to ticket people, not just hanging at the end of East Broadway when traffic's at a crawl. Have checkpoints near Spice Valley or by the Reefs or Shelley Bay Park.
• If someone's off the road already, quadruple the fine.
• Get those video cameras up and active at those frequent accident spots. Legislate their use so that when someone breaks the law and causes an 'accident', they can be effectively spotted and prosecuted.
• Speaking of fines, increase them. I hate the Gazette for screwing up their archive, but there was a report in January of 2007 that indicated that Police believes that people would rather keep paying the $50 fines than cut their speed.
• Politicians need to set a freaking example and stop driving with bad habits, most notably cell phone abuse. Police officers driving shouldn't be honking at their buddies. Taxi drivers shouldn't be ambulance-chasing.
• I don't have hope that this is going to have a major effect, but Dejon Simmons needs to be part of any campaign to alert the public on road safety. His story needs to be rebroadcast.

It's past time to take off the kid gloves. The Bermudian public at large is not listening to the pleas to drive with care. Take those who aren't, off our roads. The vehicles, too, if necessary. Oh, and let them know that prison awaits those who drive after being taken off, too.