Road Safety Week Message from His Excellency the Governor, Bruce Dinwiddy

HE the Governor Bruce
Dinwiddy

Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Most of us learn to drive as teenagers or in our twenties. I was lucky to have parents who took a close interest in driving. They made sure I was properly taught. But I confess that, in spite of their close supervision, I did some crazy things as a driver, especially when I was young.

Mercifully, I lived to tell the tale. But, especially on today’s roads, with high traffic densities, many do not. Here in Cayman, I have been particularly saddened in the past two years by the number of accidents which involve no other vehicle at all - accidents where a driver merely lost control, most often because of excessive speed, sometimes simply as a result of inexperience, or occasionally because of mechanical failure.

The truth is that almost all accidents are preventable. And the high rate of accidents in Cayman is as costly in terms of human life and suffering as it is to our economy.

We all tend to think that it won’t happen to us, or to our children. But it can, and it will, unless collectively we work much harder to ensure that it does not.

This is not just a question of individual behaviour, though clearly that is very important. It is also a matter of how we try to influence others. Please think about what you – yes, you - can do to reach out to other members of your family, and to the wider community.

It is all too easy to hide behind a vague feeling that God will provide and that His will will be done. But it is emphatically not God’s will that anyone should die, or be seriously injured, on our roads. Thanks to Him, the choice is ours.

We should all reflect this week on the enormous saving to our community, in social and economic terms, if we could at least halve the number of accidents on our roads. And there would be enormous benefit, too, for our Police and our Courts, who could devote more of their resources to the serious business of dealing with crime.

This week will offer us all a range of opportunities to learn more about road safety, about how to avoid accidents, about our responsibilities to drive and cycle carefully, and to walk carefully when on or near our roads. And we can all make a big contribution by showing greater courtesy to one another by, for example, clearly giving way to the other person when he or she is temporarily blocked or unable to come out of a side-turning.

It is partly a matter of education, of knowing how to go through a roundabout, when to signal, and how to position one’s car on the road when turning right. It is also very much a matter of consideration and patience. Where other people’s lives may be at stake it is also inescapably a moral issue, which it is our collective duty to address.

I therefore congratulate the Public Health Department on organising this Road Safety Week, along with the Royal Cayman Islands Police, the Road Safety Council, Mattsafe and the Department of Education. This is part of a global campaign by the World Health Organisation, under the banner, “Road Safety is No Accident.”

I hope that with the co-operation of the public the activities being arranged this week will have a real and lasting impact on how we all behave on Cayman’s roads.

And it can – if each of us takes with us out onto the roads some basic consideration and patience - and if we each take the time to inform ourselves so that we can keep pace with the changing complexity of our road lay-out.

Accidents need not happen. With a higher level of responsibility on our roads by every driver, we can dramatically reduce – if not eliminate – accidents due to human error.

But it will take the concerted effort of us all. Road Safety is No Accident.

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