Drunks and speeders causing most of serious crash toll

(CNS): Even though drinking and driving is one of the main causes of accidents on local roads, overnight on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, police arrested only four people for DUI and just 23 in total during the holiday safety campaign Operation Winter Guardian. Reflecting on the road safety element of the holiday campaign, which ended last week, Chief Superintendent Brad Ebanks said police officers witnessed “truly bad driving”, especially drunk driving and speeding.

Ebanks said that most road users understand the importance of safe driving, but there “are many who engage in truly bad driving cultures, particularly with regards to drinking and driving and excessive speeding”.

He said that during the campaign, the police arrested at least one driver who was more than three times over the limit, another drunk driver who was already disqualified from driving due to previous offences, and one man who was so intoxicated that he couldn’t stand while at the Detention Centre.

“These are some extreme examples of the type of behaviours that must change,” CS Ebanks said. He noted the significant increase in road fatalities, with 14 deaths in 2024 compared to nine in 2023. Four of the deaths last year were during the festive season in December.

“I would like to send my condolences, on behalf of the RCIPS, to all the families who experienced loss throughout last year, as I know the toll that the holiday holds for those who are grieving,” he said.

“Let us do our endeavour best to enact change throughout this upcoming year and the years ahead so that we can all be safer on our roads and in our communities. Currently, road fatalities are the largest cause of tragic deaths in the Cayman Islands, and it must be everyone’s priority to do their part to diminish this driving culture,” he added.

Ebanks thanked the more than 4,550 people who used the Purple Ribbon Bus Service on New Year’s Eve. “You made the choice to be responsible instead of drinking and driving and helped make the roads safer as a result,” he said.

On New Year’s Eve and into New Year’s Day, the RCIPS, with the help of partner agencies, conducted a major operation, deploying additional police officers to provide a robust road safety operation. With the high number of road fatalities last year in mind, the RCIPS boosted the number of officers available by deploying the current class of recruits from the Training and Development Unit and partnering with Customs and Border Control.

Several units were deployed to carry out proactive patrols and address any social issues, disrupt illegal activities, and assist with crowd control in heavily attended areas. This appears to have been a success, police said. Although there were a number of calls for service throughout the day of 31 December and into the early morning hours of 1 January, there were no calls about significant violence or serious road collisions.

Continuous vehicle checkpoints were carried out throughout the night, and 29 traffic offences were detected, most of them for expired vehicle registrations. Four people were arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. All of them were booked into custody and granted bail pending further investigation.

Over the entire Winter Guardian campaign, which ran from 16 December 2024 to 6 January 2025, officers dealt with over 550 traffic-related incidents, ranging from road collisions to traffic offence ticketing. Twenty-three of these incidents were DUIs and 85 were speeding offences.

In addition, 122 people were prosecuted for using a vehicle without the proper licensing or registration, and 21 were prosecuted for using a mobile phone while driving.