We all know speed limits are in place for a reason, principally for one’s safety – yours, mine, the general public’s safety.
With the not so bad roads in the island and on regular non-rush hours (9 AM to 4 PM), the desire to pump the gas pedal and forget about speed limits is truly a temptation.
Just recently, over at Yona, a couple of cars (hell-drivers we call them) were confirmed to have been racing and in the process, one had side swiped a school bus. Luckily, there were no injuries to passengers or to the irresponsible drivers.
Problem is, luck is not always on our side as we have seen with the fatal accidents that have been taking place on quite a frequent basis these past months. These simply are meaningless -senseless deaths. As to who is to blame, who is at fault is after the fact and no longer matters.
Given the seriousness of the problem which is over speeding, the concerned authorities should no longer take this sitting down. A serious no nonsense enforcement of speed limits should be in place. This can only be done with the use of widely available technology as in radar monitors and other more high-tech monitoring systems.
The motorists should realize, that a 30% increase in a speed of 50 MPH from the normal 25-35 MPH speed limits poses a tremendous increase on bodily injury should a mishap occur vis-à-vis a 30 % speed limit increase would not translate to getting to your destination at 30% sooner. Therefore, when you increase your speed by 30% assuming your regular travel time (within speed limits) of a 20 minutes drive would not make you reach your destination at 14 minutes or a savings of 6 minutes, but instead all one can expect to gain is a 10% reduction in travel time (stats show this), meaning if you drive beyond the speed limits you will most likely be ahead of a law abiding within speed limits driver by a just a minute or two, which of course the question now to all of us would be, is it worth it? Is it worth saving 2 minutes of your time vis-à-vis if you were to be involved in a mishap and gain the risk of incurring a higher risk of bodily injury for you and the other innocent motorists?
Guamanians, should give this some good thought. Guamanians should adhere to speed limits. There is no room for over speeding. The risks simply outweigh whatever minor benefits one may achieve from over speeding.
In the meantime, our law makers should lend their support to traffic enforcers, the current administration should extend the needed logistical support for an effective implementation of speed limits, the needed equipment to give the needed teeth for traffic enforcement, coupled with the needed public information dissemination programs that would certainly lead to an attitude of prevention and deterrence. The fact always is that crime prevention/deterrence is always better than crime solution.
Guam drivers, let’s all drive defensively and safely!!!
