Road smashes average 225 per month
(CNS): The RCIPS is raising the alarm once again about the significant number of crashes happening on Cayman’s roads, many of which are due to mobile phone use. So far this year, around 225 motor vehicle collisions are being reported to the police each month. The vast majority of them were categorized as ‘damage only’, where no one was hurt, and a large number took place during traffic jams at peak times, adding to the already bad congestion on the roads.
The RCIPS said it is widely believed that the main cause of these types of collision is distracted driving, usually mobile phone use. With schools now in session, the police said they will be conducting traffic operations targeting motorists using their cell phones while driving.
Last week, officers issued “just under 20 tickets” to drivers using their mobile phones behind the wheel, police said.
“We are encouraging all drivers to give 100% of their attention to driving, and particularly not to use their mobile phones during their commute,” said Chief Inspector Malcolm Kay. “Not only is the use of mobile phones an offence in the Cayman Islands, carrying a fine of $150, but in using your phone while driving you not only put your life at risk but also the lives of other road users, including children going to and from school,” he added.
- Fascinated
- Happy
- Sad
- Angry
- Bored
- Afraid
Even ‘damage only’ incidents cause significant traffic delays, missed appointments, people late to work/school, cost of emergency vehicles responding, etc.
Can’t fix stupid with stupid. Plan on traffic and accidents to get worse until CIG runs out of money and friends. Then all the bad drivers will move to the UK and only expats will live here. All Caymans problems fixed.
I find that the Hurley’s roundabout, with traffic moving from a two-lane coming from GT to a three-lane, is just frustrating. I find that drivers in the right approaching lane cross over in the middle of the roundabout to the middle of the three lanes. They are very aggressive, too, appearing to feel that that is their lane and will force the traffic moving from the left lane to the middle lane over to the inner (third) lane bordering Hurley’s.
I see this type of navigation all the time.
I have given up and simply select the right lane on the approach and keep to the right, only moving over to the left after I have cleared the roundabout and the traffic allows.
I fail to see why the traffic police are not aware of this and why they won’t station officers there to observe and at least caution drivers who change lanes when crossing the roundabout.
. Lane discipline (264 to 266)
264
You should always drive in the left-hand lane when the road ahead is clear. If you are overtaking a number of slower-moving vehicles, you should return to the left-hand lane as soon as you are safely past. Slow-moving or speed-restricted vehicles should always remain in the left-hand lane of the carriageway unless overtaking. You MUST NOT drive on the hard shoulder except in an emergency or if directed to do so by the police, HA traffic officers in uniform or by signs.
Laws MT(E&W)R regs 5, 9 & 16(1)(a), MT(S)R regs 4, 8 & 14(1)(a), and RTA 1988, sects 35 & 186, as amended by TMA 2004 sect 6
265
The right-hand lane of a motorway with three or more lanes MUST NOT be used (except in prescribed circumstances) if you are driving
any vehicle drawing a trailer
a goods vehicle with a maximum laden weight exceeding 3.5 tonnes but not exceeding 7.5 tonnes, which is required to be fitted with a speed limiter
And as for the people ok here saying we should get rid of roundabouts… you are a disgrace to the roads and should be banned. If you can’t correctly use roundabouts and don’t understand why they are more efficient and safer than 4 way stops and lights, you should not have a driving license.
Truly ridiculous how caymanians drive.
When ask about the amount cars on this islands being limited Remember what Alden QSea McLaughlin said driving is a right not a privilege ! Numnuts
It’s always a caymanian or Jamaican I find at roundabouts… my right of way, they don’t indicate right then just go ahead of me. I beep my horn… they are oblivious to their dangerous error and sometimes abuse me as if I am being rude. How do these people have driving licenses?
I drove past the traffic department. Both unmarked sedans were parked up. They should be like UK patrol cars and pretty much driving constantly.
Let’s say 8 hour shift. Staff appropriately, and as soon as they return for paperwork after 6 or 7 hours, another unit takes the car out.
More patrols on motorbike too. Bicycles in rush hour gridlock.
Take the crap heaps off the road. You know, the ones you see, literally with headlights and rear lights MISSING, and that damage sure as hell wasn’t done that day, or even week.
Try a unit or two on foot by Compass/Gas Station/Jacques Scott traffic lights. Just waiting there and you’ll see one idiot drive through on the phone every light cycle, guaranteed.
Vehicles towing boats, jet skis, gardening trailers…most of which are illegal, with no brake lights or license plate.
Have you seen the car that tows a jet ski on a trailer attached inside the boot? How the crap is this real.
When certain MPs are driving and texting or holding their phones to their ear and talking I don’t see how the police can do anything about the problem.
We have to educate the drivers. Learn from what other countries have done to make the traffic more safe.
Also the car insurance companies can save a lot of money when there are less accidents so they can play a big role in getting the traffic safe.
What other countries do? They have proper driving tests and don’t recognise joke licenses.
Didn’t mention previous averages. Is 225 per month less or more than usual? Is this considered ‘good’ ? Lol
I can tell you that in a mid size UK town with hundreds of thiysands of vehicles on the roads this would be bad. So in Cayman it is terrible.
Bad is an understatement. This is about 20 times more crashes per capita than the uk!
Blue Honda Fit RS just overtook me on South Sound. Car got stuck behind a van that was moving slowly. This was fortuitous for the Honda as it slowed them down where a police car was doing speed checks.
It’s this casual dickhead driving that often goes unpunished, even when police are nearby. This dickhead driving is what causes the crashes.
“Highway” is a road that vehicles travel on you numb nuts! It doesn’t specifically mean motorway or dual carriage way only. 🙄dear God! Please help these people.
Lived here 15 years. Travelled throughout Asia, Europe and the America’s. Caymanians and Jamaicans still the worse drivers I have seen anywhere in the world
Because most of these people got thier drivers license from Disneyland and the police are nonexistent, nothing will ever change. The police giving out speeding tickets in the morning is just ridiculous.
They should be in traffic catching people doing things that will actually cause bad accidents. Can we atleast post more speed limit signs and slower traffic keep left signs. That would be great.
After 51 years driving here, my conclusion is we have not only drunk drivers, speeding drivers, careless drivers, unlicenced drivers, uninsured drivers, banned drivers, but above all, STUPID DRIVERS who do not have a clue about the rules of the road. I could list all the stupid things they do whilst driving, but I don’t have 30 mins in which to do it.
8.57pm Just one example, drivers in a left turn or right turn lane, who have their indicators on!.
Huh?
Police on lifetime paid vacation
..non existent on roads
Not a lot the police can do about stupid. It starts with proper driver training, testing and licensing. Most of the licensed drivers in Cayman could not pass a UK or European driving test.
But yet basic patrols and fines actually are a deterrent! So yes, they can do something.
3.35pm Agree but most are from Jamaica who can just exchange the license that they probably bribed someone to get. I don’t care what treaty UK & JA country signed up to Cayman needs to stop this foolishness.
How can they police with so much traffic?
How about they try.
Doesn’t help when you have driving instructors are training their students to indicate right at a roundabout whilst using the left lane to go straight on. It is very confusing and is not in the Cayman Road Code. You should only be indicating right when using inside lane on roundabout to go all the way around and come off using the right hand exit. Why has this practice just emerged? Where is the oversight to control what is being taught to novice drivers? This is creating confusion and is very unsafe.
The only virtue possessed by roundabouts is that they are the second cheapest possible way to control an intersection, the cheapest being stop signs.
They’re also the most efficient by far when stupid people don’t use them.
That’s garbage. They use a lot of space so not at all cheap. They are very efficient though; assuming the people using them have an IQ greater than a chicken. Besides judging by the number of smashes at the Jacques Scott crossroads many drivers here don’t understand traffic lights either.
You should not use the left hand lane of going right at a roundabout! You unifications right and stay in the right hand lane, then indicate left before you turn off and merge to left lane to exit the roundabout.
I do agree however with you about the indicating right and going straight on at roundabouts – I have seen many police cars do this too – it is absolutely bizarre. If you are serious that driving instructors teach that they should be struck off and removed from their teaching license. Why anyone anywhere ever thinks indicating to the right to go straight on is correct is beyond me – just shows a complete lack of intelligence and utter stupidity.
Cayman does teach drivers how to drive they leave that to the private sector and then wonder why they have a problem.
MLAs will only do what they need to get rich but will never address what Cayman needs for real security…driver education, mandator higher education and more policing.
Sure. You keep believing you and your unreachable lazy colleagues aren’t the problem.
I’m sure some drivers with dash cams have footage of serious infraction. Why not start posting video and images of offenders. Show the cops what’s really going on.
Really, if RCIPS and CIG wanted to clamp down on offenders they would have started 20 years ago. It’s not like technology isn’t available and it’s now much cheaper to implement too.
Get more traffic cops out there, is it that they don’t they like to sweat for their paycheque? You can’t catch offenders sitting behind a desk since you don’t have a first world traffic cam system yet. Instead you went and bought the Fisher Price version instead, and now it’s obsolete.
The tipping point was reached years ago where if appropriate technology and enough bodies were employed in cracking down 24/7/365 the RCIPS wouldn’t have to worry about budget, they’d be raking it in more than CBC does with duties.
This circus on the road can’t continue!
Suggestion for police. Put an office plane clothes on a bicycle and ride down inside of the traffic in morning. You’ll catch hundreds I see it every morning.
Officer not office. Plain not plane. Doh.
a few folk have started posting dash cam footage to the Caymans Worst Parking group on FB.
Sorry but I don’t do Fake Book
Ok. Who cares
Ok but can they also fine people for not using their indicators or not using the round-a-bouts correctly….absolute hate the “policing” here. Disgusts me.
There’s none unless there is a crack down, you must be new here.
The problem is most police don’t indicate properly at roundabouts
Do you mean like a lot of the general public?
Not very many drivers of any kind know all the little slick moves with a roundabout. I say get rid of all roundabouts in the Cayman Islands. They cause too many accidents! They are more trouble than they are worth.
Sounds like you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the wheel of a car!
Better yet get rid of the drivers who can’t use them.
Nor anyone else.
Roundabouts are inherently unsafe. They should have never been used in the Cayman Islands……… and they ARE unnecessary!
The rest of the world manages roundabouts just fine. Only idiots can’t use one safely.
PEOPLE PUT YOUR PHONES DOWN and DRIVE!
It’s better if you arrive at your destination late than to arrive at your death early.
This is a major plea “… as the live you save may be your own.”
why dont the cops keep records of the nationalities involved in crashes?
excuse the political incorrectness…but from my experience jamiacans are the worst drivers on the road along with young caymanian males.
why is the jamiacan liscence accepted here…it is not accepted in the uk…..where all jamiacans must pass english driving test after 12 months in the uk.
ya nah see how the police drive. Lmao.
That demographic is the popo!
10.14am Maybe you don’t need a driving test, but you sure as hell need to pass an English test.
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
…and you’ve been told time and time and time again; your “evidence” is for the most part not admissible, nor does it prove who is driving. Someone come past you too fast? Your camera is not calibrated or certified. Someone cut you up? Meh. Someone didn’t indicate, again meh. Now if there was a big smash and you had footage of one of the cars driving recklessly just before you’d probably have something they’d be interested in, otherwise; meh.
and again your comment makes no sense. its evidence, possibly good or bad it don’t matter…its evidence.
Inadmissible evidence, with no corroborating evidence, that an unknown person has possibly exceeded an arbitrary number or not indicated… yeah I can’t imagine why the police don’t care!
The worst driving in Cayman is the uniquely Caymanian habits of turning right at a roundabout using the left lane and also changing to the left lane on exit from the right lane of a roundabout, half the time whilst indicating they intend to do the opposite. It’s bizarre and it doesn’t help that the Police don’t seem to have a clue either.
I can top that! I have seen people turn right on the round about without going around the roundabout to make a U-Turn by going the wrong way. I have personally witnessed this twice!
Roundabouts should have never been used in the Cayman Islands. Visitors (like me) from some other countries have never used them.
It’s really not that difficult to learn.
Make an effort.
You better never go anywhere in Europe then. Or you could just learn to drive.
Did you get your license in a cereal box?
This is astonishing. The driving here is so bad – as a UK expat it amazes me how badly most caymanians and a lot of expats from outside UK also cannot drive properly using the British Highway Code system, from not using the inner most lane on highway, not indicating, being in wrong lane on roundabouts and tail gating. Makes me wonder if many have taken a real driving test in manual car as required in UK and done the driving theory test.
250+ crashes a month – in the Uk there are about 7,000 a month. based on population size, UK statistics would translate t0 about 7 a month here. That emans CAyman has 36 times as many crashes as UK, all because of the terrible driving standards. It is truly 3rd world statistics.
Which lane s the innermost? The right lane closest to the median? Asking for a friend
No!! The inside lane is the left lane! The outside lane is the one on the right for passing! Don’t sit and go slow in outside lane when left inside lane is available – it creates most of the traffic and is terrible driving to do so. Always sue the innermost (being the left) lane available on a highway.
I hear you but find it perplexing that the lane closest to the verge or shoulder is considered the “innermost.” What is it inner of?
Idiot. It’s the inside… closest to when you join and closest to where you exit. Unless you plan to join for the other side through a verge!
Your inside lane is always the lane closest to oncoming traffic, so your inside lane is the right most lane. This lane is also usually called a passing lane in most cases. The leftt most lane, is the entrance/exit lane, and usually referred to as the curb lane. This is the lane most people should be driving in normally.
Oh god. People like you are the problem. We use a British driving system.,, in the us the inside lane is on the right. In the us the inside lane is the left. Also we don’t have curbs, or passing lanes… we have pavements and outside lanes. This is not a us territory. USA driving laws (which are way worse than the uk) are irrelevant in cayman. The us has very few roundabouts which just shows how useless they are
Cayman doesn’t use the British Highway Code system though. We also don’t have actual highways
What do you mean by an ‘actual highway’ that the UK does not have? The UK has motorways, some with 4 lanes each side, that stretch for hundreds of miles. I may have misread your comment but are you saying that the cayman highway system is more advanced than the uk? The cayman Highway Code is based largely on the uk Highway Code, and the rules of uk ‘dual carriage ways’ are the same as the cayman ‘highways’ code under cayman law.
The right lane is reserved for overloaded dump trucks driving fast with flashers on to show they are exempt from any restrictions. They are paid by the load and own the road. They are also allowed to startle cyclists with there loud horns and jake brakes and the three feet passing rule is reduced to 3 inches for a truck passing a bicycle.
It’s incredible when you consider the average speeds here are so low; ETH could easily be NSL if people here could control a car over walking speed.
Totally agree, even if you are doing the maximum speed on Cayman roads local drivers HAVE TO overtake you, it’s like it’s an honour thing!
Remember, these are only reported crashes. There’s a whole load of bumps, scrapes and smashes that go unreported, either because they’re so minor the drivers don’t feel the need to report it, or they’re so shamefully drunk, uninsured or unlicensed that they can’t report it.
The driving here is TERRIBLE. Shamrock Road by Lantern Point, to GT, every morning, you’ll see the worst of it. Ridiculous speeding, cell phones used, kids not secured, unroadworthy vehicles, plus the lane swapping with no indication idiocy done to save 0.2 seconds with every swerve but causing cars behind to brake and then hold more people up.
The Red Bay Roundabout heading west. The three lanes becomes 2 lanes plus a separated 3rd lane. The number of people who blast pass Barcam, then either go in third lane up to the demarcation and swerve into the middle, or keep in the third lane just to try to get ahead in traffic, seriously, your brains are so small you cannot work out that you’re an idiot that causes traffic to be worse!
Those mini roundabouts at the end of the runway area. It says to signal turns. It says it for a reason, ie if vehicles indicate then traffic (which is bad) can flow better (which is good) and it’s also common courtesy (which is a bonus).
That said, people are stupid and don’t change, so we’re screwed.
Get a bike, motorbike, or electric car, and enjoy at least some smugness in the hell of Cayman traffic.
The 3rd lane leading to the red bay roundabout needs to be coned off from the Esso down. Every day idiots cut into that lane then cut out at the last minute to bypass the incoming traffic from red bay. The end of the lane needs a stop light so that cars can’t just cut in while traffic is flowing from shamrock rd. We, the residents, don’t deserve to be stuck in traffic longer because of the schools and then the terrible 3rd lane drivers who continue towards grand harbour.
What is happening with the new lane? Why isn’t it finished?
Why are we all feeding into 1 lane by PPM roy’s family horse farm? Why isn’t that sorted?
Why can’t drivers slow down? Well, I guess that’s because we never see a patrol car pulling people over. It’s pathetic 3rd world jam rock life for us.
As a motorcyclist I lavish the smugness of rolling on by a whole highway full of gridlocked cars moving at walking speed.
Yes it’s risky but I’d literally rather it than spend 2 hours of my life in traffic every work day.
risky is an understatement.
How about a jet pack, hoverboard or personal drone? But then that will just lead to more carnage when aerial vehicles collide with CUC lines🤣
Sock it to ’em, sock it to ’em, sock it to ’em! Maybe you can fine my wife and tell her it is against the law. It’s scary!
What is the demographic of those responsible for most of these accidents? Tell us! We are a democracy. Give us information.
We would, but as we don’t know the population or the makeup thereof, we can’t provide that information.
they cant even figure out the correct population count and you want a breakdown of demographics? That will give them nosebleeds all day long
6.55am Jamaicans outnumber all other nationalities put together. Don’t have to take a driving test. Are basically lawless. So guess.