Despite the many warnings, the many deaths, the agony and the injuries,

the lives and livelihoods despoiled continually, drivers continue to drink and drive; families get into vehicles even while they are aware that the person behind the wheel had been imbibing quantities of alcohol that would inhibit their ability to drive safely; some police officers accept a bribe and then let errant drivers go; parents allow youngsters to go on joyrides without questioning their intentions or their destinations; and so the saga of vehicular destruction to lives, livelihoods and lifestyles continue unabated.
Drunk or speeding drivers kill others and then speed away without caring that they may be leaving an injured person lying on the road, whose life may have been saved if there had been timely intervention.If and when they are caught, they are quickly bailed out and continue with their lives, without caring about the devastation that their thoughtlessness, selfishness, and irresponsible conduct had caused.
Rarely is a vehicular killer punished in accordance with the seriousness of his crime of taking someone’s life; and even rarer still is he punished at all for injuries someone may have received through his fault, even if those injuries incapacitate someone for the rest of his/her life.
So parents lose their children; children lose their parents; siblings are bereft of brothers and/or sisters; grandparents lose beloved grandchildren, in a continuum of suffering that seems to have no end in sight as each dawn breaks on screaming headlines of another vehicular accident causing death or severe injuries.
Buses plunge into ravines, killing persons; on dark roads vehicles cannon into trucks that have no indicator of their presence, and the drivers and/or owners of the trucks are not held accountable for the deaths and/or injuries that have been caused by their carelessness and selfishness.
Minibus drivers are the worse culprits, overtaking, undertaking, braking to a sudden stop, overloading  – just for an extra fare.
Legislation was passed to ban loud music in vehicles, to no avail; so old people, students studying, infants, sleeping children and parents who need their rest are suddenly jolted out of their sleep by vehicles blasting their music at decibels to split the ear drum.
Wealthy parents are buying all-terrain vehicles for their children to have fun through village streets, and the ear-splitting noise of these vehicles revving up at all hours of the night and day destroys the peaceful existence of residents and the peace of communities.  These vehicles are not easy to control and can easily topple if handled carelessly, and riding them like go-karts is definitely dangerous, both to the rider and others in the vicinity.
What use is legislation if there is no real enforcement?  To deliberately drink and drive, or to speed on the country’s highways are acts of conscious choice, with the full awareness that it is a crime to do these things; and murder is killing by intent and is an act of conscious choice; so what differentiates one from the other?
Unless and until the legislators and the legal system takes more punitive measures against perpetrators and make the punishment fit the crime, there will continue to be carnage on Guyana’s roadways, and devastation in homes and families.