THE Turkeyen Police Station is without working telephone landlines for three years now. There is absolutely no way to make contact with the station in case you see a terrible crime being committed in the area. Two Fridays ago, a wash-bay on the Railway Embankment just outside Giftland Mall played music from noon until 2 AM. This was not loud music. This was loudness that was indescribable.
Facing the full blast of the sound was the residence of the Ambassador of the Dominican Republic and a house in which lives the 86-year-old mother-in-law of the CEO of Stanley Mings’ business. Right in that compound live several diplomats, including the residence of an American diplomat whose house lies right in the path where the music was blaring. No one could contact the Turkeyen police station. This atrocity at the station must come to an end right away.
Next is the loud music from vehicles in Guyana, which perhaps has no parallel in the world. A moron knows that on all the major roads, including the highways leading to the East Bank and the East Coast, that is where you find people living. If you drive your car with speakers in the backseat and the music is unbearably loud, you will discomfort an ocean of citizens. But discomfort is one thing; physical injury is another.
That music is so loud that it is an impossibility in the realm of physics for the driver to know if he/she hits a pedestrian. It simply boggles the mind to know why this expanding social threat is not confronted by the relevant authorities. I look out my veranda and see police patrols stopping people for riding without helmets and asking drivers for documents.
Yet, no policeman stops these nihilistic drivers who have speakers in the back seat of their cars. Anyone who lives in Georgetown can see this is a deviancy that is growing and, if not stopped, will turn into a disaster soon. And it is reaching other parts of Guyana. My wife and I were on the West Coast last Sunday. Parked outside a Chinese supermarket was a car with tons of speakers in the backseat playing music so loudly that you could have heard it in Timbuktu.
Finally, roundabouts. No one can accuse me of recently denouncing of roundabouts. When Guyana was switching over from traffic lights to roundabouts, I wrote 10, not 2 or 3 but 10 columns rejecting the advent of roundabouts. Just Google it and you will find them. Then and now, I have argued and I am arguing, that traffic signals have a smoother function than roundabouts.
I do not use highways that have roundabouts leading to the East Bank. I use the old East Bank highway. My experience with the new roundabouts is frightening. I don’t have money to repair my car, so I am avoiding roundabouts. I have seen on multiple occasions how chaotic and almost insane is the use of roundabouts. The one at Ogle where the traffic lights used to be is a nightmare.
There must be an urgent national debate about whether Guyana should retain the roundabouts or go back to traffic signals. At the junction of Railway Embankment and UG Road, there are traffic lights which make the waiting long, but the smooth use of the road can be graphically seen.
At the roundabouts, your heart is in your hands because insane drivers, irrational drivers, drivers without commonsense want to come into the roundabout when they are not allowed to and they do come and there are crashes. The police force does not have a statistical notebook on the daily crashes on the roundabouts because the drivers privately settle, like one of the operators of my podcast, the Fredie Kissoon Show, who was illegally hit at the famous Heroes Highway roundabout.
Thousands of years ago, research became part of human existence. The relevant authorities can know if traffic lights are safer and more efficacious than roundabouts by research. The nightmares I have seen with my own two eyes can be picked up by the cameras. Over a period of time, the video would show what goes on at those roundabouts and the state can decide if traffic lights should come back.
I end with an example of commonsense in civilisation. No human on planet Earth is going to continue to sit on a bench when they see gangs firing at each other. They will run for their life. No human is going to run a red light because they know a monster truck has the green light and will crush them. I don’t see such common sense on display at the roundabouts.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
