Topic: motorcycles

Nine traffic offense investigations involving motorbike riders arrested since last December have been closed due to “insufficient evidence,” the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service reported this week.

The citizens of a country should never have to petition their government to enforce its own laws – and yet, in regard to the hordes of motorbikers illegally screaming through the streets of Grand Cayman, it seems that is where we have arrived.

Dozens of riders thundering down Cayman roads Sunday afternoon on motorcycles, dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles prompted several calls from the public to police.

A National Roads Authority crew installed a new sign on South Church Street Tuesday warning drivers to “watch for motorcycles.” The sign went up in almost the exact spot where last month Randy Johnson, 62, was hit by an SUV and killed while he was riding his motorcycle.

Long before you see them, you hear them: Engines gunning, tires squealing, the racket reverberating up and down our streets — the menacing motorbikers of Grand Cayman, personifications of road death and lawlessness.

Police officers who say they are being swamped with calls on nearly a daily basis about illegally operated motorbikes are urging lawmakers to adopt a ban on the importation of such vehicles which cannot be registered for on-road use.