A recent fatal accident at the roundabout near Cost-U-Less on the Esterley Tibbetts bypass has prompted the National Roads Authority to make upgrades to the site in an effort to make the stretch of road more ‘forgiving’.
In a statement to the Cayman Compass, NRA Director Edward Howard said, “We continually work with the Traffic Management Panel, RCIPS and others to assess crashes [and] driver behaviors to determine how best we can minimize incidents of serious and fatal injury whether through errant or willful reckless driving practices.”
The road works come in the wake of the passing of Courtney Oneil Bennett, who died in the early morning hours of Thursday, 6 Jan., when the Honda Civic he was travelling in left the roadway and collided with a concrete structure at the centre of the roundabout. The cause of the accident has not been disclosed by the RCIPS.
The roundabout has been the centre of several collisions in recent years, and now Howard said his team is making “additional engineering safety countermeasures” to address excessive speeding.
“Roundabouts in Cayman are geometrically designed based on internationally accepted standards and should be driven at speeds of 15 to 20mph,” said Howard. “Drivers attempting to navigate any of Cayman’s roundabouts at excessive speeds under impaired conditions or with reckless abandon grossly violates the intersection’s safe design standards.”
As part of the upgrades, the NRA installed guardrails on the curve next to the inner northbound lane, as well as redesigning the entrance to the roundabout.
“NRA, in keeping with the ‘WHO Decade of Action for Road Safety’, subscribes to the efforts of reducing serious and fatal injuries on our roads by making roads as ‘forgiving’ as we reasonably can,” said Howard.
Bennett’s death is the first fatal accident of 2022. Last year Cayman’s roads claimed nine lives.
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It’s probably more dangerous now. To accommodate pedestrians they have had to leave a gap part way down which instead of deflecting a car will cause it to crash head in into that section of barrier. That’s assuming it missed the rather uninviting end of the barrier in the first place. Maybe it would have been easier to plant impact absorbing greenery on the roundabout and removed the concrete art structures?
I use this roundabout every day and it was already well designed. No worse than every other roundabout on this highway.
Very sorry that someone died. However he must have been approaching this roundabout at close to 50 mph. I suspect alcohol was involved.
What NRA money really needs to be spent on is improving the traffic flow at the ALT and Hurley’s roundabouts.
Can I suggest even a single lane overpass open in the George Town direction from 7am to 11am, shut for 2 hours then open in the East End direction from 2pm to 8pm would do a lot to help.
What is all the equipment for?, a row of substantial speed bumps placed close together on the approach lanes will more than cure the problem.
WHY HAVE THESE BARRIERS BEEN PUT UP! 99.999% of the population can get around this roundabout without hitting it! Why would the roundabout entry be uglified like this because of a single incidence of speeding/reckless driving? The way to minimise these incidents is to ENFORCE speed limit laws – not uglify the whole island. We need more beautification of the roads no a perpetual race to uglify them all. By the way NRA, really great job on the Grand Harbour mess.
Agree with the poster about speed bumps. Take a lesson from Grenada. They have a slower pace of life and have speed bumps on their main highways.
Cayman in the 80s had polite drivers taking their time. Let’s stop thinking traffic solutions are always about more cars driving faster.
When, oh when will we introduce real public transport as well as segregated cycle lanes ?