SPUR TREE, Manchester — A resident here has agreed with road safety experts that inexperienced drivers and overweight and defective vehicles are among the main causes for accidents on the crash-prone Spur Tree Hill main road in Manchester.

“The road is not dangerous; it is the people who drive the vehicles,” the resident, who opted not to be named, told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday at the scene of a two-vehicle crash.

The crash, which involved a truck and a Suzuki Grand Vitara, resulted in a woman being seriously injured.

The resident, who witnessed the crash, said the truck was out of control when it collided with the Suzuki, injuring the female driver.Police said about 1:15 pm the truck, which is assigned to PriceSmart, was travelling downhill with two men aboard when it hit the Suzuki Grand Vitara and overturned.The eyewitness told the Observer that the crash was terrifying as she saw it unfolding. “I saw when the truck turn over and when it hit the vehicle that was coming up the road [hill]. When it swinged it cross the road, went over to this side and turn over, so basically a that me see,” she said.“The lady in the Vitara was spitting blood, so she went to the hospital. The men in the truck weren’t hurt,” the eyewitness added.

The Spur Tree main road links Mandeville and its environs to St Elizabeth and points west. Heavily laden, slow-moving trucks often hinder traffic on the steep, difficult hill, and there have been a number of fatal crashes involving trucks over the years.

In a February 3, 2022 Observer story headlined ‘Defective, overweight vehicles and inexperienced drivers to blame for Spur Tree crashes’, Dr Lucien Jones, vice-chairman of the Road Safety Council, and a senior police officer said some drivers need training in how to manoeuvre the steep hill.

“Training is a central part of it, in terms of getting your general licence or your trailer licence,” Dr Jones said at that time.

He said that, based on crash reports from the police, some drivers involved in accidents on the Spur Tree Hill main road do not engage in low gear early enough to slow the vehicle.

“[They] depend rather on brakes which can fail you, especially with very heavy vehicles and turning around those curves often leads to the kind of news reports that we get about crashes, both non-fatal and fatal,” he said.

“The number one warning to the drivers is to be extremely careful when they are going down that road and also for those who are coming up the road, because you never can tell what may happen around those curves,” he added.

The senior police officer, at the same time, said overladen trucks were mainly to blame.

“As you start descend the hill the first sign says engage low gear, but one of the problems is it doesn’t matter the gear you engage in if you are overloaded; the vehicle still a guh run faster than the norm,” he said.

He said coming up the Winston Jones Highway from the east, heading west, puts a lot of pressure on the vehicles.

“It a guh run hotter than normal because the hill is long. All the way up until you reach Hatfield. [When] it is time to descend the hill that vehicle is hot already. Whether you engage low gear or you [are] using your brake just the same, it is not holding as when it was cool,” he explained.

“If your vehicle is running too fast you can’t change gear in the middle of the hill. It is a combination of things that cause accidents,” he added.

“Driving a truck around Kingston to deliver [goods] is different from going downhill. Different ball game,” said the policeman.

He added that inexperience and greed are also factors that lead to accidents involving heavy units.

“Plenty of the [truck drivers] want to make three trips in one day and it is not possible,” he said.