Government Was Warned

18 injured in minibus accident | Barbados Today: "18 injured in minibus accident
Added by Dawne Parris on January 26, 2014.
Saved under Local News

Police have confirmed that 18 people, including the driver, have been injured in the minibus accident which occurred in Gibbs, St Peter just after 4 pm today.

Police PRO Inspector David Welch said the minibus overturned on to its right side when Wendell Piyotte lost control of the vehicle.

Among the 18 people injured, five of them are in serious condition, including Piyotte, a resident of Upper Mount Standfast, St James.

Inspector Welch said seven people had to be taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital by ambulance.

The accident triggered a mass casualty response which included police, six doctors from the QEH, and personnel from the ambulance service, the Barbados Fire Service, the Barbados Defence Force, the Roving Response Team and the Disaster Emergency Management."

'via Blog this'

People who say 'I told you so' are never very popular, but through this blog, a petition, newspaper articles, and letters sent on our behalf by the current and former parliamentary representative for the constituency of St. James North, the Government of Barbados has been warned about the dangerous driving and hazardous road conditions in the Road View-Mullins-Gibbes area.  To our knowledge nothing has been done to date, except the demarcation of a center line of the roadway.  The question remains:  How many more innocent lives Government is prepared to see sacrificed and/or maimed before it acts on the behalf of its citizens and visitors to the island?  This blog will continue to keep watch and count.

To the reader:  If you ever use the roadway on foot or in a vehicle in the Gibbes, Mullins or Road View area, or if you care about road safety in Barbados, please sign the petition.  Again, the life you save could be your own. 

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British Tourists Injured In Bus/car Accident In Road View/Mullins

(click in top portion of image to enlarge)

Several British tourists and at least one local were injured today and taken away by ambulance from the scene of an accident in Upper Road View, St. Peter involving a Transport Board bus and a rental car in which the tourists were occupants.  The injured local was a pregnant female who was a passenger aboard the bus.  The accident occurred around twelve noon in front of the Texaco service station in Road View which is located near a slight bend in the road which has been hazardous to both pedestrians and motorists, as this blog has reported in the past.  This blogger's thoughts and prayers are for the speedy recovery and well being of the injured, and although I am not a prophet nor the son of one, I TOLD YOU SO!  I told you this day would come, and it is going to get worse as long as the authorities continue ignore the call of this blog for something to be done about this dangerous stretch of roadway with an open pit on one side in this high volume tourist area so close to the popular Mullins Beach.

Click here for more pictures and feedback on the Road View Lime.

Click here to read about previous accidents near this spot.

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Another Lesson And Warning For Mullins Bay

Recently there has been a spate of vehicle accidents in the Mullins Bay area some of which regrettably involved fatalities. Luckily that was not the case yesterday in the accident pictured above. It allegedly was caused by a motorist not taking due care while exiting the parking lot of the East Moon Chinese Restaurant thus forcing the oncoming northbound vehicle to take evasive action which ended up in the significant property damage pictured. It could have easily been much worse as the accident occurred at a very busy bus stop for locals and visitors heading into Speightstown and points north.

With more and more traffic on the road and more and more visitors taking to rental cars it should now be an imperative that all should slow down when passing through the area. It cannot be overemphasized that extreme caution should be exercised on this main road by both motorists and pedestrians as the road is narrow and winding. Special attention needs to be paid to the crossing by the beach bar which also needs to be more clearly identified and parking even briefly around that spot should absolutely not be tolerated. Likewise overtaking in the area (the suspected cause of the two high profile recent fatal accidents) should be banned. Mini-buses (PSVs or yellow buses) should be specially monitored as they are the main source of most of the frustration many motorists experience in the area.

Storm drains should be cleaned and covered. There should be no excuse that in 2008 in one of the most sought after beach destinations in Barbados that there is an open sewer (aka storm drain) on the landside of the road from the Texaco service station to the former Kings Beach Hotel; not to mention that it was only cleaned once in the last year and a half and that there is a virtual tropical rainforest growing within it. Locals and visitors alike are forced to bob and weave their way along this stretch to avoid being knocked down by vehicular traffic. That drain may have been state of the art when it was built in the late 1950s - early ‘60s when the area was still a fishing village with sugarcane fields fronting a road still traversed by donkey carts, but it is deadly pit in today’s tourism economy. Yesterday’s accident and the recent other deadly ones in the area should be lessons and warnings - not just curiosities. As we can see even in the above photo there are visitors using this road every day, and while not minimizing the lives of the locals who died on the road recently, do we really want to be reading about them losing their lives on this road in the New York Times or the London Telegraph?


Jentillia

The Choisuel/St. Lucia Tragedy: Lessons for Road View/Mullins and Barbados

St. Lucia and the larger Caribbean region have been plunged into mourning this weekend as a result of a tragic traffic accident last Thursday night which saw the loss of at least 16 (some reports claim as many as two dozen) precious lives.  This accident hits home for this blogger as the area where it happened was part of my old stomping ground when I worked in Soufriere, St. Lucia many years ago. My thoughts and prayers are with the families left behind. Now is the time for us in Barbados to stand with our brothers and sisters in St. Lucia in their hour of trial. Keep in mind also that just over a year ago this same general area of the country bore the brunt of Tropical Storm Tomas and is still in recovery mode. St. Lucia is our closest neighbour after St. Vincent, many St. Lucians call Barbados home, and many more, including their Nobel Laureates - Sir Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott - are of Bajan descent. "But for the grace of God, there go [we]."

It can happen here and has happened here in Barbados - re: the Lancaster and Horse Hill disasters.  In reading some of the online comments by St. Lucians about this accident I am eerily reminded about what we are calling for in the Road View & Mullins Beach Road Safety Petition:

Makak Zel Gosh says:
November 11, 2011 at 7:55 am
Let me express my Condolonces to the grieving famalies during this tragedy.
During my visit to the island I noticed that the immediate vacinity of the road signs were continuing to be obstructed by tree branches, shrubs, bush etc..  The lack of reflectors when approaching Speed Bumps, for the locals this is not a problem but for returning Nationals and Tourists alike who are unaware of the location of those bumps creates a major problem at night.  St. Lucia needs to take road safety more seriously by maintaining and erecting road signs islandwide, not just in the Nothern part of the island.
Let us wake up and do things to international standards as opposed to mediocrity.

Jerry Johnson says:
November 11, 2011 at 1:10 pm
The majority of the transport drivers in St Lucia drive under the delusion they are Formula One drivers and rarely perform suspension repairs until after the fact and only replace tires when they are bald. It was only a matter of time before a driver in an overloaded van drove too fast for conditions.
My sincere sympathies to the families and a head’s up to the island’s department of transportation to perform more diligent preventative road maintenance and to the police to actually enforce the laws.

Accidents like this and the loss of life and the grief they cause are not inevitable; they are entirely preventable when we come together - governments and people - to eliminate the traffic issues and hazards that cause them.  The dangerous bends and lack of signage warning of them, lack of sidewalks, overgrown hedges, speeding buses, cars and trucks, and impaired driving all combine in our area to make another Choisuel disaster waiting to happen.  We had a close call last August 24 when several British tourists and one local were taken to hospital.  Let this be our wake-up call.  Sign the Road View & Mullins Beach Road Safety Petition and support the Barbados Road Safety Awareness efforts today.  The life you save could be your own.

How Many More, How Many More, Mr. Minister of Transport ...???

Click top portion of image to enlarge

Another accident early this morning involving a speeding Transport Board bus, according to one eyewitness, and two cars blocked the road in Road View for several minutes forcing some traffic turnarounds. Although there were apparently no injuries, this accident occurring almost on the same spot where several British tourists were injured by another speeding Transport Board bus just a month ago underlines the need for urgent corrective action to be taken at this location for the safety of both pedestrians and motorists.  How many more, Mr. Minister of Transport & Works, how many more accidents do you want to see occur on this spot before you act?  Do you also need a couple dead bodies on the roadway?

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This Should Not Have Happened

Accident Caused By Government Negligence(click image to enlarge)

Two years ago this blog drew attention to the dangers posed to pedestrians in the Road View/Mullins/Gibbses area by vehicular traffic and the poor state of the main road which traverses the area complicating those problems.  Nothing has been done since then towards implementation of the numerous recommendations, some of which could have prevented the accident in Road View yesterday morning which sent an 80-year old senior citizen and area resident to the hospital with her life hanging by a thread.  She was trying to cross the road to avoid a difficult to negotiate stretch complicated by an uncovered storm water drain or gutter on one side of the road.  She had to choose between walking in traffic around a dangerous bend or trying to straddle the gutter (pictured above) - a challenging task for the fittest of us, much less an octogenarian.

What are we waiting for to cover this ditch and create a proper sidewalk in this heavily trafficked tourist area? Are we waiting for a photo of a tourist in the state pictured above to be plastered all over the British or Canadian media before we act? Did we not learn anything from the the Long Beach incident last year when our Government and the local media with egg all over their faces were hiding from the international media and the blogosphere? How many more must die or be maimed for life because of these damned Neanderthal ditches in a 21st century economy? Of course, this blogger is not suggesting that a visitor's life is more worthy than that of locals, but tourism is our livelihood and this ditch is a threat to it. More and more tourists are forced to use this road because they can no longer walk along the beach thanks to the groynes in the area that have destroyed the beach. This blog has also been calling for the removal of those groynes for nearly four years to no avail.

See also: Bad Karma In Area


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How Many More?

THREE (3) MORE DIED ON THE ROAD VIEW - MULLINS - GIBBES STRETCH TODAY

  "THREE PEOPLE LOST their lives including a 14 month old baby, along Gibbes Road, Mullins St. Peter, this morning around 10:30 after the car in which they were travelling was involved in an accident with a mini-bus.
Police reports said the deceased are Sherese Alleyne 19, of Durants Village, St James, her son kion 14 months old and Nakira Harewood 17 years also of Durants, St. James. Alleyne and Harewood died on the spot while the infant died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.The victims were travelling in the same vehicle." NationNews.com

Click here to sign the petition to curb the insanity.  See also: http://j.mp/rvSAFE

Thank You

Several years ago this blog started a campaign to improve road safety in the Road View/Mullins Bay area, and 2016 saw the start of the fulfillment of that vision in the covering of a portion of the storm drain/gutter between the Rubis Service Station and the location of the former Kings Beach Hotel, creating the much needed sidewalk pictured above.  At the beginning of  the New Year 2017 we take the opportunity to look back and say thanks to all those who were instrumental in bringing about this critical piece of community infrastructure.

We thank our Parliamentary Representative, the Hon. Edmund Hinkson, who used his good offices to interface with Government on our behalf to see the realization of this community amenity.  We thank Maria Bradshaw and The Nation newspaper for visiting the area and highlighting our plight over the years.  We thank all those who signed our petition or in any other way supported our efforts in making this a matter of urgent public concern.  Finally, we thank the MTW workers who actually provided the manpower in creating this outcome.

Unfortunately, however, even after nearly an entire year of construction the project is still not completed, and the most critical stretch between the service station and the Bombas and Cheers restaurants/bars around a crucial bend in the road remains uncovered.  This bend saw an accident where an area octogenarian was knocked down by a truck and was hospitalized.  Fortunately, she survived and nearly seven (7) years later is still walking along this dangerous piece of roadway.  So, even though we say thanks, we continue to advocate on behalf of our residents and visitors, and hope that long before 2017 comes to and end we can all celebrate this improvement in road safety in Road View/Mullins.   

Another week - yet another car-bus accident by the Texaco service station in Road View/Mullins

Click top portion of image to enlarge

Click here for more pictures.

Click here to read about previous accidents at this location.

Click here or on the widget top left to petition the Ministry Of Transport & Works to investigate and implement necessary changes to preserve life and limb.  If you use Hwy 1B through Road View/Mullins, the life you save could be your own.


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Think Globally - Act Locally

Sign the Road View & Mullins Beach Road Safety Petition

Wear the Barbados Road Safety PicBadge

See also: 

Another week - yet another car-bus accident by the Texaco service station in Road View/Mullins

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Here We Go Again ...

Rush hour traffic was backed up for about half an hour just after eight o’clock this morning by yet another fender-bender in front of the Texaco service station in Road View. This is at least the fourth such incident in less than three months. Although this particular accident was minor, it again underscores the danger to pedestrians and motorists inherent in the stretch of roadway between the Gibbses/Mullins border and Sweet Home Gap, Road View, St. Peter, Barbados. Several people have been hospitalized as a result of these incidences and it’s only a matter of time before there is another fatality in the area if nothing is done to rectify the problems. This is not a joke nor am I being too overly dramatic - people will die here soon if we continue to do nothing.

If you have not done so already, I urge all reading this to sign the online “Road View & Mullins Beach Road Safety Petition” to pressure public officials to act fast on this issue before it is eternally too late. Also, to show your wider support for road safety in Barbados consider adding the Barbados Road Safety PicBadge to your Facebook or Twitter profile picture for a day, a week, a month, or longer as you see fit. Thanks.



See also:

Think Globally - Act Locally

  Road View Headache (Nationnews.com)

  Barbados Road Safety Awareness

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