Cops urge road users to think safety
Cayman Islands Hospital, George Town
(CNS): The RCIPS is planning a major road safety campaign, which will begin at the end of this month, following the tenth fatality of the year last Friday. Pointing to the tragic variety of ways people have been killed this year already, Superintendent Angelique Howell urged people to take more care on the roads and follow the laws.
“This past weekend we saw the tenth death on Cayman’s roads this year,” Howell stated. “This is tragic, as we now have the highest number of deaths on the road since 2011, and the year is not over yet.”
She said there had been a variety of fatal and serious accidents on the roads this year but there was no single factor to pinpoint, as people were killed in a range of situations and for many different reasons.
“Some victims wore seatbelts or helmets, some did not, some were speeding perhaps, others were just jogging or riding a bike. The public needs to be aware of all aspects of road safety, not speeding or racing, not drinking and driving, always wearing seatbelts or helmets. These accidents show that we need comprehensive, consistent awareness. The road is public space; we must share it,” Howell added.
The RCIPS is launching an initiative at the end of October to focus on education about road safety and traffic laws, as well as road operations to enforce them.
“We hope the community will join in these efforts, which we will publicise, and help us make the roads we all travel every day safer,” the officer added.
Rhonda Marie Ebanks-Azan (61) became the tenth victim when she was killed Friday evening at around 6:45pm in a crash close to Savannah Primary School. A 54-year-old man who was driving a Ford F250 truck was arrested but no charges have been brought.
Category: Local News
An alternative heading should be Public urge cops to think safety” by not parking on roundabouts when questioning suspects, by enforcing the traffic laws, by actually adhering to the traffic laws themselves, and get up of their backsides and do the job they are paid to do.
Yard syle traffic n driving taking over just as the attitude is everywhere else!
Stop annoying and harassing hard working people. Target the druggies and criminals with their over tinted windows, obscured license plates and clouds of ganga billowing from their hondas.
It is about driving safely, not class warfare. I bet you are an awful driver.
Like a lot of things it starts at the top. The officer driving Her Excellency The Governor never wears his seat belt if she is not in the car. Never did in the last car and doesn’t in this new car. There is no excuse, it certainly can’t be uncomfortable to wear a seat belt in an air conditioned Jaguar. Of course H.E. will not see this but everyone else on the island including the Commissioner and MLA’s should be able to see this.
It is truly painful to watch Govt do business. If you get a ticket that means you have a driver’s license. If you fail to pay your ticket then that should automatically be noted on your license in the system at DMV and monthly penalties levied until paid. No pay, no renewal.
So simple. So much untapped revenue going to waste.
Come on guys. This isn’t “rocket surgery”!
That’s the problem… You are right. It is brain science…
How about Police being out at rush hour in the mornings? I never have seen them out except when the schools went back. They were out for a week patrolling the roads by the schools. Now they have disappeared there are drivers that blatantly disrespect other road users and disregard the law.
Every morning I witness cars driving on the hard shoulder to cut in traffic whilst others await patiently. Every day I see mini buses and cars driving down the middle of the road outside Lighthouse School so they can make an illegal turn left and cut traffic at the approach to the roundabout . Every day I see several vehicles turn right from S Sound Road onto Old Prospect Road when there is a No Right Turn sign posted.
The current strategy used by RCIP regarding the Policing of the roads is not consistent. Laws need to be enforced all the time and not one week a year. The roads are currently lawless and there will be more fatalities if things don’t change. Please reinstate the Traffic Department.
The message here is simple “learn to drive properly, and obey the highway code, that way you won’t kill yourself or others”
An overfilled gravel lorry has recently left a trail of it’s contents on every traffic circle northbound on bypass from ALT to Kimpton. Even the Scooby Doo gang could solve this one. The rocks are like ball bearings at the point of maximum lateral load on tires, they cause expensive road surface erosion, and chip the paint on cars. If the Police were out in their vehicles and doing their job they would surely see and feel these fresh spills, recognize that it’s unsafe, instruct NRA to clean it up, address the owner of trucking company to pay their fine – which we would hope would be substantial. But the routine discovery and clearing of road hazards doesn’t even happen on a normal timeline because the RCIPS are either not out or clueless. We are left to speculate when the RCIPS will commence a traffic patrol with normal performance expectations – even those which don’t even require public interaction or confrontations. When will the mangled protective Armco at the northbound exit of Ritz roundabout get fixed? Been mangled for months! Another truck crashed into the dangerous hazard before it was repaired in last week’s rain. Can they not see these things?!?
A lot finger pointing at the police. But the main issue is the chronic scale of drunken driving in Cayman. It is a disgrace that such behavior is normalized. You can’t get a bus or afford a taxi? Tough! It is not an excuse to drink and then drive. Something needs to be done and that something should be some jail time for everyone caught over the alcohol limit, first timers too.
COPS URGE ROAD USERS TO THINK SAFETY.
Here’s a better idea.
ROAD USERS URGE COPS TO DO THEIR FREEKIN JOBS AND ENFORCE BASIC TRAFFIC LAWS!!
“No single factor”? Here’s a factor….RCIPS needs to consistently enforce the traffic laws!
Seeing the previous post about the RCIPS asking all wanted on 700+ outstanding warrants to turn themselves in and now this indicates one thing only. The RCIPS just want to sit on their duffs either behind desks or in their cruisers and skylark. Heaven forbid, they might have to pull someone over to issue a ticket. This will undoubtedly create more work which they seem to have a strong aversion to.
Asking anarchistic minded citizens to uphold the law is clearly not working. You have to get off your asses and do something about it boys and girls! You are paid out of the public purse to police, not skylark.
They may as well just build a separate prison and court of law just for they traffic offenders. They’d fill them up in no time!
Employ a whole new load of poilce officers just for traffic offenders and rake in a load of money in fines. If they don’t pay the fine, they go to jail and lose their car. If they continue to take the piss out of the law and they are not permenant residents then ship them off home. If they can’t obey the laws, they are not allowed to stay. Bye bye you bunch of wankers!
There’s a culture starting here where drivers deliberately flout the laws. For example, in Savannah going west, they like to overtake round the corner, while staying inside those yellow hatched, no-go areas in the road. They’ve started to ignore the double yellow lines when going east past Ocean Club. I watched a truck do three passes into the prohibited oncoming lane, the final one as he went round the corner at the end of the straight. Tinted plates are used so you can’t get the number of an offender, and tinted windows so you can’t see their eyes when you need to at junctions. The new thing is to remove the front registration plate, as if you are in the States. Finally, it’s a good bet that fully half the motorbikes don’t have visible plates. If the law were changed so vehicles could be confiscated for such ‘in-your-face, screw-the-law, what-are-you-gonna do-about-it-anyway’ offenses, things would change quite quickly for the better.
I do not understand why the Police cannot police the roads. Idiots everywhere you look, yet they issue virtually no tickets.
Any journey I take on any road, I always see people breaking the traffic laws. Seatbelts, tints, speeders, unroadworthy heaps, unlicensed vehicles, cars with red/green/blue lights at the front, cell phones etc. How hard is it for someone to address this????
There are tickets! 700 of them but nobody can be bothered to collect payment!
700 over how many years? I could issue 700 a day.
Aint that a fact!
There will be another road death soon, if I ever catch up with driver of a gold Honda Accord (illegal tints) with a green Tein sticker on the back. I have seen him drive on the hard shoulder near Lantern Point, past the new gas station, undertaking all the stationary traffic. Upon reaching the roundabout, I assume he/she then cuts back in. Selfish POS.
I’ve seen them do that as well. It really wound me up! I would not let him back in if I had my way. It’s just so disrespectful and selfish! We all want to get to work! Just wait like everyone else. Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
As annoying as the tossers who drive in the right lane, then switch to the left lane nearer the roundabout…to save a few seconds.
Then there are those who turn left on to South Sound by turning left at the roundabout, rather than filtering off to the left earlier. In doing so, causing all the people driving correctly to have to wait even longer. FFS you save several seconds, and piss off a lot of people.
I completely agree about how frustrated I get at the people using the roundabout to go onto South Sound in order to cut off the cars using the correct slip road. But what I really wish we could see is a police car hiding around the corner at Red Bay Primary school where selfish drivers are STILL overtaking on a double yellow lane, driving through a turning lane, cutting in front of the traffic and finally turning left despite a clear sign forbidding them to do so!! The traffic department would make a fortune, and would be applauded by all the people using the correct lane who are being forced to give way to the bad drivers.
Here is another exercise in futility. More lip service. The Police have an adequate budget. The lack of enforcement is astounishing. The RCIP are loosing the role that they play in our society. They scream for eye witness testimony only to have witnesses threatened and paraded around like Batabanoo. They scream they need CCTV to avoid relying in eye witness testimony only to have it proven ineffective and continue to ask for more of the same supplied by the Security Centre. They cannot keep the chain of evidence secure again Guards provided by the Security Centre. They want to have traffic enforcement on the cameras again provided by the Security Centre. It appears that when major incidents happen the RCIP asks for help from the public then for more money only to give it in some form in many cases to the Security Centre. This is outragous and is not in line with a Policing body. There is more to Policing then the RCIP road shows, paying salaries and inventing ways to contract the Security Centre. If a halt is not put on this more money will be given to the cause of traffic cameras in place of the Police actually doing their job and we will not be better off
How about an update on this year’s crop of hit and run cases?.
In the last six months I’ve seen two separate occasions of police driving whilst using their cell phones….
They are allowed to do so by law, provided of course “its police business”…….
What is it with the bloody campaigns??? Just go and do your job every day of the week! Those people who drive like maniacs do NOT care about your campaign. They will continue to drive like idiots until they are being caught and dealt with to the full extension of the law!
If you have a hard time finding those maniacs, you are welcome to accompany me one day on my drive to work and I will happily point them out to you.
Any updates on the 700 ticketed offenses not yet been paid?
No single factor? What a joke! Ms. Howell needs to get out of her air conditioned office and drive around for a few hours.
The roads here are lawless and the RCIPS do nothing about it. Everyday I witness speeding, dangerous/erratic driving, people driving while texting, eating, drinking, applying make-up, etc., etc.
Also, get those damn tints off license places. If you can’t read the plate you cant report an infraction.
Public safety campaign! SMH. Just do your damn jobs RCIPS!
The RCIPS should educate their officers before trying to educate and enforce the road laws to the general public, the amount of times I see officers breaking the traffic law is ridiculous.
Like the Brown SUV that the Gang Unit drive around in going straight through the 4 way stop at the Hospital the other day with out stopping; no sirens to indicate and emergency, just kept on going down Walkers Rd like nothing happened.
In other news, the RCIPS made an impassioned plea to all armed robbers requesting that they exercise appropriate caution when waving guns around while inside liquor and jewellery shops.
Mobile phone use, cutting corners, driving in safety lanes, the compulsory use of indicators (rather than the just used at Christmas approach to brighten the festivities), lower speeds, more care and attention paid to where you are driving should see some results. Will it happen? Most people think they are invincible until they hurt of kill someone, and then they have to live with it for the rest of their lives. If those people want to do some good for the community-front and centre of this campaign, TV ads with them telling of their mistakes, shame, guilt…make it hit home hard. And more police on the roads-the absence of police sadly makes people think they do not need to obey the rules. That makes them stupid and irresponsible, but sadly you cannot fix stupid.
What is a safety lane? Do you really mean to say bicycle lane?
And why would you have a separate bicycle lane 4.22? If it’s too difficult let me know and will write in words with less than 3 letters.
TWAT!! I ask a simple question as to what a safety lane is and get your idiotic reply, simply asking if 11:32 means a bicycle lane or maybe perhaps even the hard shoulder.
if you cant work it out you need help…and I apologise for making fun on especially talented persons.
Guess you must be from Oh merica if you think the hard shoulder is called a safety lane. Have fun with your trolling
Well I don’t know what a safety lane is
Yes please enlighten us educated people and tell us what is a safety lane? I’m having a hard time finding such a term in the UK Highway Code, perhaps it is an Americanism which would explain a lot.