FORTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD road crash survivor, Barrington Waldo, a Trelawny resident, has welcomed the current decrease in traffic collisions, especially in his parish where he came close to death seven years ago.

In retrospect, Waldo strongly feels that his firm belief in God enabled him to survive the terrible crash that killed three people in 2003.

After the collision, which occurred along the Duncans to Falmouth main road, in the vicinity of Spring Hill, the three, including a female, were left dead, while Waldo survived with multiple injuries.

“It must have been a miracle and my firm belief in the Creator; there is no other way to explain it,” Waldo reasoned, as he reflected on the incident.

The crash occurred at about 2:30 pm on October 27, while Waldo, a tailor of Clarks Town, was travelling westerly towards Falmouth.

Minutes earlier he had picked up three friends — two males and a female — who had asked for a ride into the Trelawny capital.

He later collided with a truck that was parked on the soft shoulder of road, and was about to drive onto the main road as Waldo’s vehicle approached.

“When the truck pulled out on the road, my car ran straight under it. The whole thing happened so fast, I couldn’t avoid it,” he recalled. All the occupants of Waldo’s car were taken to the nearby Falmouth Hospital, where the passengers who had suffered multiple injuries were pronounced dead.

The driver of the truck escaped injuries, but Waldo suffered multiple fractures to both legs; his left hand was broken as well as several of his ribs. His lungs were also punctured making it difficult for him to breathe.

Waldo was transferred to the Cornwall Regional Hospital and later airlifted to the University Hospital of the West Indies where he spent almost a week on life support.

In spite of the pain and mounting medical bills, however, Waldo remained confident that he would pull through. “During my time in hospital, I did not worry, I just kept on praising God. I knew that God was there for me so I did not worry too much about my situation,” he said.

A father of two at the time of the crash, Waldo said he received tremendous financial support from his sister, Lorraine Golding, during his illness. “My sister was there for me. God provided her for me because she was a tower of strength and was there for me at all times,” Waldo said of her sister, who was living in Kingston.

Just over a year after the deadly crash, Waldo was able to resume his job as a tailor at a North Coast hotel.

The crash involving Waldo occurred at one of Trelawny’s crash-prone spots and the Police indicate that other ‘black spots’ in the parish include the Martha Brae and Salt Marsh main roads.

Other crash-prone areas in western Jamaica include Norman Manley Boulevard, Petersfield, and New Hope areas of Westmoreland; Reading, Rose Hall and Unity Hall, in St James; Point and Round Hill in Hanover and Barbary Hall, Shaw main road and Rocky Hill in St Elizabeth.