He did all he could
ST ANN, Jamaica — Though one man died and 14 people were injured, operations officer at Guardsman Group of Companies Rudolph Green is convinced that Friday’s horrific crash could have been worse if it wasn’t for the actions of the company’s driver.
Police say the two-vehicle collision involving the Guardsman bus and a Toyota Wish motor car happened sometime after 8:00 am on the Laughland main road.
Alwayne Smith, from Steer Town in St Ann, died from the crash. He was driving the motor car. He was pronounced dead at hospital.
Green, who expressed condolence to Smith’s family and friends, said he visited the scene of the crash and left with the impression that his colleague had tried his best to avoid the collision.
“If I’m speaking from a Guardsman perspective and I look at what happened this morning, it has nothing to do with the driver of our staff. As a matter of fact, he is our hero this morning because he saw what was coming. He did all that he could. He actually went over to the soft shoulder, the only thing left for him to do was to actually drive into the ditch, which he didn’t do because perhaps it would have been worse. So he really did all that he could have done at the moment to avoid anything else serious,” he said.
He insisted that Guardsman drivers are adequately trained.
“The continuous appeal on our part is for our drivers to use the road in a responsible way. We have various training courses… Before a driver hits the road they go through training. I know it’s easy to brand people; you see one car and you say all security companies… gonna have accidents… But we don’t put a driver behind a steering wheel without first training them,” Green told the Observer.
He stressed, however, that he had no information on the cause of the crash.
“I’m quite certain that the authorities will investigate the matter,” he said.
“We can’t speak from a doctor’s perspective but we’re gauging from what they’re telling us and we’re hoping that by the end of the day some people may be discharged from hospital,” he added on Friday.
Smith is the third person to perish on the parish’s roads in less than a week. On Saturday hotel workers Mikel Thompson and Reece Thomas died in a two-vehicle collision.
