– Traffic Chief
TRAFFIC Chief, Mr. Neil Semple, yesterday said that speeding and driving under the influence (DUI) were the main causes of the Emancipation weekend fatalities which claimed the lives of three.
In light of the frequency with which road fatalities have been occurring of late, Semple is appealing to drivers of all categories of vehicles to be more responsible, and if they must consume alcohol, they need to have a designated driver at all times.
This drinking and driving and wanting to speed, he said, is fast becoming a norm, especially when it’s a holiday weekend like the recent Emancipation celebrations, and the end result is usually the senseless loss of lives and damage to property. As such, he is urging drivers to stay within the designated speed limit, and their relatives and friends to ensure they do not take the wheel after having gone to a function and drank up a storm. He said the recent road fatalities clearly show that the victims were indeed speeding and under the influence, which is of grave concern to the police, as they are not happy with the loss of lives.
Semple said it only goes to show how irresponsible and irrational one can become when they drink and drive.
Two young men, Choonilall, 19 and his neighbour, Ramnarine, 30, were killed when the latter lost control of the vehicle he was driving, hit a utility pole, and ended up in a trench at Leonora, West Coast Demerara on Emancipation eve, Saturday night.
The lone survivor, Choonilall’s brother, Visha, who was in the back passenger seat, said they were at the time returning home from a wedding.
Meanwhile, on Emancipation night (Sunday), Ravi Singh, 31, of Montrose Railway Embankment, East Coast Demerara, died on-the-spot and caused two others to be seriously injured so as to be hospitalized when the blue motor car he was driving (PLL 9680) ran into another, a white motor van, PFF 2416, which was travelling in the opposite direction.
That accident occurred at about 03:55h at Vryheid’s Lust, East Coast, and word is that the impact was of such that the two vehicles involved in the accident have been ‘written off’.
The two injured persons, who are now patients at the Georgetown Hospital, are Khemraj Singh 46, of Buxton Sideline Dam, and Manaj Singh 45, of Martyr’s Ville, all East Coast addresses. Reports are that the deceased may have been speeding, which caused him to lose control of the vehicle. The driver of the other vehicle was Khemraj Singh, with Manaj Singh as his passenger.
Semple said yesterday that a postmortem performed on the bodies of Preminand Ramnarine and Deoram Choonilall revealed that they both died of asphyxiation due to drowning, while Ravi Singh’s showed that he died of multiple injuries.
He said the fact that most fatal accidents tend to occur in the early hours of the morning tells us that at that hour of the day, some drivers are so overwhelmed with alcohol, they sometimes fall asleep on the wheel or simply apply speed just to get home.
Responding to the observation that traffic ranks tend to be less visible in the early hours of the morning, due no doubt to a shortage of staff  in the traffic departments countrywide, Semple said that measures have been put in place to address that in the form of an ongoing traffic exercise employing the use of the radar gun and breathalyzer.
He said that during a recent exercise on the West Coast Demerara, 16 convictions were made for DUI, while the East Coast Demerara and Berbice saw seven and 38 persons respectively being charged for the same offence.
Traffic Headquarters, Eve Leary said that for the year to date, 60 persons have died in 59 road accidents, while for last year, the figure was 66 persons to 58 road accidents.