It seems as if everything connected to Christmas is coming earlier this year; even the frequency of vehicle crashes.
Two men were injured in a car crash on Eastern Avenue early Saturday and had to be airlifted to hospital in Jamaica.
On Sunday evening a car crashed into the home of Cayman Kai residents.
And those are just the crashes we know about.
Many other that don’t involve injuries are death are never reported to us.
We’ve already had eight people die in wrecks this year in the Cayman Islands. If the driver of the car that crashed Saturday morning doesn’t make, he’ll be number nine.
That’s too many.
We shouldn’t have any person meet the end of their life on our roads.
In most cases speeding was involved; in some overtaking was the contributing factor.
Whether or not you liked former Police Commissioner Stuart Kernohan, he did seem to have a knack of getting our traffic problems under control, somewhat.
While many of us groused and grumbled about the various roadblocks, Kernohan did have us thinking about our driving habits at the least and knowing that police would be on patrol to catch offenders at the most.
While it is comforting to see patrol cars on our roadways, it isn’t the Police Service’s job to stop us from bad driving habits. That’s up to each individual driver.
It seems that near Christmas each year the Caymanian Compass finds itself in the position to report on yet another road death.
We still may have to this year, but it’s not something we want to do.
One of the major problems on our roadways is speeding. Another is tailgating and overtaking.
Both can lead to death.
Throw alcohol into those two bad driving habits and your chances of dying or causing the death of someone else increases dramatically.
Do you really want to be responsible for killing someone this close to Christmas?
We think not.
This is supposed to be the season of cheer, goodwill and love for our fellow man.
We need to show those traits everywhere we go and especially on our roadways.
Keep in mind the two-second rule as you take to the roadways this holiday season and throughout the New Year.
The rule involves watching the car in front of you as it passes a fixed object like a tree or a fence and then counting two seconds.
If you pass the marker before the two seconds are up, you are too close to the car in front of you; it means you are tailgating.
If you find yourself in that position you need to slow down and back off.
And if the roads are wet, double the two-second rule to four seconds.
Most of all slow down.
Christmas is going to get here soon enough. We don’t need to rush it, our own deaths or the deaths of innocent people because of our stupidity behind the wheel.
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