Cops’ clampdown cuts crashes
(CNS): Operation Quaker, an RCIPS campaign focused on traffic enforcement, is having results after just two weekends. Compared to the first weekend, when police began the clampdown on rogue drivers, the number of road smashes, drunk drivers and general traffic offences all fell during this second weekend. Police were called to just nine collisions between 4 and 6 June, a more than 50% drop compared to last weekend.
Five drivers were arrested for being drunk behind the wheel and around ten tickets were handed out for other road offences. Despite the improvement, senior police officers remain concerned about the bad behaviour on the roads and will be continuing the crack down.
“Although the number of motor vehicle collisions this past weekend was lower than in previous weekends, with no serious injuries, there were still some incidents of concern,” said Chief Inspector Malcolm Kay, who oversees Specialist Operations.
“The fact is that even one person choosing to drink and drive or travel at excessive speeds can result in tragedy. As such, Operation Quaker is ongoing, and the public should continue to expect increased enforcement and police presence on our roads throughout this coming long weekend and beyond. Let’s all continue to do our part in ‘Making the Cayman Islands Safer’.”
Inspector Dwayne Jones, who heads the Traffic and Roads Policing Unit, welcomed the significant reduction in the number of motor collisions.
“We are hopeful that this, combined with the lower numbers of DUI arrests and tickets, means that our increased presence and messaging around traffic enforcement is having the desired effect, but we will not become complacent,” he said. “We advise the public to continue to exercise caution on the roads, and to always make safe choices while driving by not speeding or driving while under the influence of alcohol.”
Even before Cayman reaches the halfway point for the year, there have already been five people killed on our roads and more badly injured, as road collisions, speeding and drinking and driving remain common and the number of vehicles on the roads continues to increase.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
Great job doing your job for the last two weeks. Won’t mean nothing when you go back to the usual no law enforcement on the roads for the rest of the year. What would it take to get police on the road all year long? Yep. Nothing could do that. Plan accordingly and drive as little as possible.
Duh!
Time feh unna to do de damn job!
Start with a culture reformation around drivers’ licences. These should not be cards implying someone has the unrestricted right to drive. Have clearly printed on every one of them: “This licence to drive a vehicle is contingent upon the bearer’s adherence to the Cayman Islands road code.” Infractions should be recorded by due authority and the licence immediately invalidated. Protocols should be established for replacement of invalidated licences.
I was done for speeding, going past SS jetty at 42 in a 30 zone. Middle of the day. That was back in 1993. At my court appearance, my lawyer said the jetty area was a cash cow for the police, and the magistrate laughed out loud. Somehow got me a smaller fine.
How come the police no longer sit and wait at the jetty ? Got better things to do now ?
Traffic police should work on commission ! Say 25% of the speeding fine for starters and say $1,000 per drink driver. Police would be retiring quickly and deaths/crashes due to behind the wheel would plummet to practically zero in a month or two. Yes it will take that long, huge number of incredibly dangerous drivers out their. All different nationalities ! What are the chances of the Police being allowed to work on commission………………Zero I’d bet
FOOL
Don’t sing your praises too loud, crashes are down shootings are up. I support your effort but truly you’re just doing your job.
will keep asking:
my dashcam records hundred of incidents of dangerous driving every week.
why do rcips not want this footage?
why would a police department not want clear evidence of people breaking the law?
if i had video footage or robberies, would they want the footage?
will wait for answers
You are waiting for answers on CNS?
Why don’t you call a police station and ask them? Or are you waiting for the Police Commissioner to read your comment and reply personally?
If something happened to you and you have dash camera footage of it, Go make Police report and bring the footage with you to the station and be prepared to provide a statement.
still waiting for answers.
The answer is no. If they wanted to enforce laws they would do it themselves. And they don’t. Unless they are told to and then it’s for a week only.
Saw coppers doing radar trap by Governor square last night. Saw then pull two cars in under 5 minutes.
I don’t usually see it done at night so I was happy to see something being done about the speeding that takes place after dark.
Friday night is just becoming too much to be out of my yard and on the road. The speeding and reckless driving is getting worse. Hope to see more night enforcement like I saw yesterday.
10 tickets over the course of the weekend is nothing to brag about. They could write that many tickets in 5 minutes by parking at any given intersection on the island. Between people not stopping for red lights and stop signs or not indicating it would be no problem to find 10 offenders.
Time to increase ticket amounts to $1000 for a cell phone and minimum 2 year ban, $5000 fine and vehicle sold or crushed for DUI. Minimum of $500 for everything else. Kick them where it hurts. In the pocket!
I think a big problem is that some people can’t read English. I had a food delivery driver get “lost” in West Bay – he could not find my location, a very popular road in West Bay, and when he called me asking for directions, I asked him where he was and he could not tell me, so I asked him to read the nearest road sign so I could tell where he was, and he could not do that, he hung up the phone!! I seriously think that he could not READ!! This is very common, that lots of people from other non-English speaking countries come here and cant read (and refuse to learn), and thus they can’t read the road signs and also how the heck did they pass the drivers written exam?
Or employers just putting them out on the road the day they fly in without any training. Had that happen to me as well.
Errr, I’ve driven in countries with a language different to mine. I still didn’t drive like a dick, or flip my vehicle in a 30 zone on a dry sunny day.
Why do so many people struggle with the concept of mean reversion? If you have a spike in accidents away from the norm, if you do nothing it invariably goes back down. Correlation does not equal causation and the chances that the police nicking a handful of people for speeding actually caused the decrease in accidents is negligible. The next time there’s a statistically bad weekend of accidents you’d be just as well putting on your lucky pants and when accidents fall again you can claim it was obviously your lucky pants!
Still waiting to see speed traps on Shammrock Road!!!
your more likely to see a leprechaun on shammrock road
To be sure
(Underated comment) ☝🏻
Cayman finally learning that actually doing your damn job has an effect on the outcome, who knew?
Perhaps someone would like to try the same theory at the DoE enforcement Dept and get certain persons doing govt work instead of their private business.
Or b.) a statistical blip reverts to normal.
They need to concentrate on south sound road and put up regular speed traps – people using it as a race track and going at crazy speeds.
There needs to be some traffic calming measures such as speed humps – it’s going to end in deaths…
Sunday morning biking pass the Jet Ski race. Bobo doing 50 on SS rd and 60 on Walkers.
RCIP cant wake up earlier enough to catch BOBO.
Their a service not a enforcer.
Need something yes, but speed bumps, no. What happens when a fire truck or ambulance needs to drive there ? Slowing down for every bump when a life needs saving ?
No, we are better off having the cops out and about, speed gunning and stopping drivers more often. Soon drivers will get the hint.
When another walker/runner is killed on Sound Road, they police will say they had no idea there was an issue because they don’t read the comments on CNS. But this has been an issue for years and the truth is, the police can’t be bothered to do anything about it. Idiot drivers are routinely doing 50+ mph on South Sound Road – including food delivery people – with absolute immunity because the police are nowhere to be found.
Still no cops with speed radar guns in the night, I assume they don’t carry night vision must be.
and still no cops on the road 4am- 6:30am when the Spotts Newlands stretch turns into a race track.
keep fighting the fight RCIP and stop hiding.
The equipment they use is just as effective at night as during the day. Hide by Lantern Point or South Shore and rack up the big tickets. You’ll score big, RCIPS.
Not noticed any change – crash this morning on a straight piece of road near Hurleys. Retards involved caused 100s of folk to be late for work and school drop off – Jamaicans per usual. Although as another commenter has mentioned not the weekend so won’t be included in their stats.
4:29pm, why has it always got to be Jamaicans? Nobody else drives fast or reckless? Hate is a sickness! I pity you.
Look at the flags inside the cars of reckless drivers
As KK wrote:
‘Cause everybody’s gotta have somebody to look down on
Prove they can be better than at any time they please
Someone doin’ somethin’ dirty, decent folks can frown on
You can’t find nobody else, then help yourself to me
Why are they retards because they have an accident? Most divers on this earth have had some form of road accident.
Keep it up until all the bad/drunk/dangerous drivers are behind bars or have their licences taken away and cars crushed.
Speed guns don’t get rid of the bad drivers, just the fast ones. The morons driving round the outside of roundabouts just carry on as usual.
Same with the morons driving in the inside lane and waiting until the last second to cut across the outside lane
This should NOT even be a headline story.
This is the regular job of a traffic section of any police force (service).
“Just the nine collisions”
I think it’s hard to really draw a meaningful comparison with such little data.
Personally, I’ve noticed no change. I’ve just been overtaken on south sound where there’s a solid white line and then seen an idiot at red bay roundabout texting as he went around it, though I guess it’s not on a weekend, so it doesn’t count.
what an epiphany! when you enforce traffic laws, there are less traffic accidents. Who knew!? Have we called the people that hand out the Nobel prize about this?
Could you imagine if each we enforced all laws properly how things would look?
I’m sure there’ll be some self serving OBEs handed out just like last year.
Do our laws dash cam video to be used to prosecute offenders? If not why not? Just imagine if the carefull drivers could supply video evidence of offenses to RCIPS for prosecution consideration.
They can be submitted. If you’re prepared to make a complaint and give a statement, even better. Unless it’s particularly serious though, establishing the driver could be difficult, depending on the video angles.
So the RCIP is finally realizing what happens when they do their job and enforce the laws.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE RCIPS…. more police presence, checks need to be done for traffic coming from the Eastern districts to GT in the weekday mornings from 6am-9am. Too many speeders, reckless and lawlessness driving!
Enforcement of laws (even if still quite pitiful) has show a drop in bad driving. Go figure. Not let’s start ticketing drivers that drive under the speed limit with a line of cars behind them.
Err, although frustrating, I don’t think that is against the law.
It fricken should be
It can be ticketed, if construed to be driving below the standards of a competent driver.
Personally it doesn’t bother me too much, unless they’re in the right lane of a two lane stretch of road. Then, it’s enough to bring back the death penalty.
I’ve been saying this forever!
I’d like to have them try to stop me in the middle of the road like a foo foo.
Another cretinous comment
No serious injuries, how does that explain the ambulance leaving the scene on its blues and twos from the crash on Shamrock Road Sunday evening with the Road closed….
This wasn’t even reported… keep up the poor work RCIPS
Well done! Don’t let up a bit, please, ever, and I am in favor of RCIPS cars parked near bars at closing.
They should go in the bars too.
Yea and get a relaxing beverage too! Give me Uber or Flex and I’ll stop.
Flex is operating at taxi rip off pricing. Tell the government to mandate LOWER FARES.
Or just on the road with speed traps.