Two injured after taxis collide on Half-Way-Tree Road
KINGSTON, Jamaica – A call is being made to motorists to drive carefully, after a two-vehicle collision on Half-Way-Tree Road in St Andrew on Tuesday morning.
“Dem fi take time! A so dem behave when it a come on to Christmas,” said an onlooker at the scene.
Reports indicate that two women were rushed to hospital after two hackney carriage operators who were driving white Probox motor cars collided sometime after 10.
Both drivers were travelling in the opposite direction.
According to one of the operators, 68-year-old Lloyd Baker, who was coming from Cross Roads, he was trying not to hit another vehicle, when the taxi operator from the opposite direction was coming at a high speed.
“Them give me the wrong cause me come over. Me never did a overtake, a man come way out inna the road pon me and a me try fi shift from him. Never know it would a cause such a terrible accident. So a swing from him now cause me see the other man never did ago stop. And this taxi man now a come down with a speed. If he saw me coming over, all he should have done was step on his brake,” he said, noting that four passengers were in his vehicle.
The other taxi operator had no passengers.
One onlooker from a nearby business told OBSERVER ONLINE that she was in her office when she heard a loud noise.
“I heard this big bang, so I rushed out. When I rushed out, I see that these two taxis collided,” she said.
Noting that two women were seriously hurt from the crash, the onlooker said, “ One was bleeding very badly enu, her face mash up and the other next to her was lying on the ground, like something do her foot. If you go out there right now, you see the blood and me afi say no man we afi help them.”
“I get to understand that he [Baker] was overtaking. Two men on a bike said is long time dem a watch him from him coming up because they say is long time him overtaking. We get to put the ladies in a vehicle and the driver rush with them to public,” she said.
Police at the scene were tight-lipped about the accident, noting that there was “nothing to disclose.”
-Brittny Hutchinson
