Pao­lo Ker­na­han

?About a month ago I was head­ed to the air­port in the small hours of a Thurs­day morn­ing. When I stopped at the traf­fic lights in Val­sayn where you can turn off to go to su­per­pharm, a tricked out ve­hi­cle roared in­to the in­ter­sec­tion and pro­ceed­ed to do four donuts in the mid­dle of the in­ter­sec­tion. For the unini­ti­at­ed, a donut is a ma­neu­ver ex­e­cut­ed by lock­ing the steer­ing in one di­rec­tion and ac­cel­er­at­ing fe­ro­cious­ly while gin­ger­ly ap­ply­ing the brake to main­tain po­si­tion.

Paral­ysed with fear I sat in my car, find­ing fin­ger­nails I did not know I had to dig them in­to the leather of my steer­ing wheel. The prox­im­i­ty of that stunt-pulling ve­hi­cle was such that if the dri­ver lost con­trol I would sure­ly have ei­ther been killed or un­mer­ci­ful­ly spared and maimed. The au­di­ence of troglodytes trilled with ex­cite­ment from the car park of su­per­pharm, drag­ging their knuck­les to and fro on the rough as­phalt mix, whoop­ing with glee.

The ob­jects of their gut­tur­al, sub­hu­man vo­cal­i­sa­tions of ap­proval, were the four mo­rons packed in­to the pimped out ride with an in­ex­cus­ably tacky paint job and even tack­i­er neon tubes run­ning be­neath the car in a ghast­ly ode to kitt and Mag­num pi (his shirts). Now, young in­se­cure chap plus souped up car equals a recipe for road tragedy; this we all know. When I see pho­tographs of a flare kit­ted civic en­gaged in a full frontal em­brace with a con­crete lamp­post I think well, that is just fair play. Prob­lem though is that they of­ten take the in­no­cent out with them.

I did not know fa­ther and son who were killed in last weeks hor­rif­ic crash and the true cir­cum­stances of that ter­ri­ble morn­ing may nev­er see the light of day. It does how­ev­er in­flame the pas­sions to see two hard work­ing men, one of whom was com­plet­ing his own home and had just pur­chased a new ve­hi­cle; be­gin­ning his life as a young adult, to sim­ply be sub­tract­ed from this plane so eas­i­ly.

This lat­est, sense­less loss of life has con­jured a dis­turb­ing re­al­i­sa­tion. If the blood­thirsty ban­dits in this coun­try don't get you, the high­ways will. My heart goes out to Mar­tin Joseph, so at his wits end to of­fer so­lu­tions to the law­less­ness in this coun­try that he should ap­peal to the pub­lic's sym­pa­thet­ic na­ture, "al­lyuh I un­der rell pressha yuh hear!" It is so easy Mr joseph, just set your bur­den down! Even Je­sus had help on his path to cal­vary.

The in­ci­dent to which I re­ferred hap­pened be­cause cit­i­zens of this coun­try have no fear of reper­cus­sions for their mis­deeds be­hind the wheel. I was very sad­dened to hear that the moth­er of a col­league of mine was killed in an ac­ci­dent on mos­qui­to creek when the taxi she was trav­el­ling in was struck by an­oth­er ve­hi­cle that was over­tak­ing and ran out of road. Can any­one imag­ine the com­plex mix of sor­row and rage in his heart? There have been 117 road fa­tal­i­ties for the year thus far and it seems that this fig­ure is jeal­ous of the mur­der sta­tis­tic. I am back with the bro­ken record of po­lice pres­ence and law en­force­ment.

Mo­torists fly up the shoul­der be­cause of the ab­sence of de­ter­rent, the taxi dri­ver will bar­rel down the Beetham jug­gling a full roti, the steer­ing wheel and a cell­phone. If you are in the left lane and a maxi taxi is on your right, you bet­ter pray that the per­son stand­ing at the side of the road does not flag him down be­cause he will pull so hard on you that your den­tures will hit the dash­board. For­get about a round­about in Trinidad where right-of-way is op­tion­al or sub­ject to in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

Re­cent­ly when I was in New York I mar­velled at the speed which my broth­er-in-law's in­fini­ti was able to at­tain. That rush was doused quick­ly by the re­volv­ing blue and red lights in the rear view mir­ror. The of­fi­cer came to his win­dow with tick­et in hand, hav­ing al­ready checked out the ve­hi­cle's his­to­ry on his com­put­er. Af­ter that my broth­er-in-law, prop­er­ly chas­tised, drove that ve­hi­cle like he was push­ing a pram. Did you know that in this coun­try it is il­le­gal to mod­i­fy the en­gine of your ve­hi­cle with­out no­ti­fy­ing the li­cens­ing de­part­ment? Yet here we have a cul­ture of home­spun grease mon­keys spend­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars boost­ing the per­for­mance ca­pac­i­ty of their ve­hi­cles and there­by mak­ing them more lethal to us nor­mal dri­vers in our sim­ple 1.6 litre ve­hi­cles.

The ar­eas where drag rac­ing most of­ten oc­curs are known to every­one in this coun­ty it seems, ex­cept the po­lice. The Au­drey Jef­fers high­way af­ter hours is trans­formed in­to a speed­way, the Val­sayn stretch is a gaunt­let of speed rac­ers yet the po­lice are nev­er there! An­oth­er cu­rios­i­ty of the road fa­tal­i­ties is that every­one as­sumes that er­rant mo­torists were un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol. While it is ob­vi­ous that drink­ing im­pairs one's abil­i­ty to dri­ve, many years ago I in­ter­viewed the then chief traf­fic of­fi­cer Nor­ton Reg­is to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly what role booze plays in the pil­ing up of stats.

Cu­ri­ous­ly I dis­cov­ered at the time that the li­on's share of ac­ci­dents caus­ing death were due to reck­less and in­con­sid­er­ate dri­ving! So we can­not even put the blame en­tire­ly on af­ter-fete wild aban­don. It re­al­ly means that this coun­try has a very large pop­u­la­tion of ir­re­triev­ably and dan­ger­ous­ly stu­pid peo­ple, and that, pound for pound, is more fright­en­ing that a man pelt­ing down Wright­son road with a stag in one hand and a roy­al cas­tle in the oth­er at three in the morn­ing. Bot­tom line is that we have some of the most dis­cour­te­ous and dan­ger­ous dri­vers in the world and they are al­lowed to be that way be­cause there are no con­se­quences for their ac­tions.

They are in­tent on hit­ting the streets and killing as many peo­ple as they can, some­how emerg­ing from their wreck­ages rel­a­tive­ly un­scathed. The po­lice are im­po­tent be­cause the min­is­ter is im­po­tent and the gov­ern­ment is im­po­tent. So we ex­tend con­grat­u­la­tions to those who suc­cess­ful­ly mi­grat­ed from this god for­sak­en land. Those of us left be­hind, we await our turn for the ham­mer to fi­nal­ly find the bul­let in the cham­ber.