Six questions for Arrive Alive

THE EDITOR: The six questions below are in response to the Arrive Alive’s intemperate statement that put full blame on the Government, through its ministry responsible for public utilities, for the deaths of four young men and the injury of four others in a recent fiery road accident.

In a public statement Arrive Alive stated that “electricity poles were installed too close to traffic.” Arrive Alive also called on the Government to “remove all electricity poles planted close to roads and highways.”

1. Has Arrive Alive shared these accepted international standards for the “safe distance” from roads and highways for the erection of utility poles and does it know if these “more forgiving” standards are adhered to, and by how many countries?

2. Do these standards include other structures such as road signs, trees and fences that may also impede vehicles that are accidentally driven off the roads that have been provided by government at great cost?

3. Did Arrive Alive consider that the carnage when vehicles are driven uncontrollably off the road is sometimes much greater when the obstacles that are in the path of the errant or out-of-control vehicle are people going about their lawful business?

4. Has Arrive Alive given any thought to what it would cost to “remove all electricity poles planted ‘close’ to roads and highways” and does it have suggestions as to a source of funding for such a project and which national projects are to be reduced or eliminated?

5. Will Arrive Alive accept that a mass removal and repositioning of electricity poles is not an immediate practical solution to the country’s road accident problem at this time?

6. Therefore, will Arrive Alive accept that it has lost an opportunity to use this and other recent accidents to caution and remind all road users that they have a primary personal responsibility to be road safe, because the life they save and preserve may be their own?

Arrive Alive is right. Vehicular accidents don’t happen. They are caused, often by a combination of reasons that includes road, weather and vehicle conditions. But more often than not the determining factors are the supposedly rational, sober, thinking human beings who are in control of the vehicles and who drive dangerously, carelessly and without due care and attention as the law stipulates.

This message of personal responsibility is particularly important as we move from the festivities of Christmas and New Year’s into the weeks of Carnival when alcohol consumption and fatigue add to the risk factors.

KELVIN SCOON

via e-mail