Blocking of junctions, running of red lights, hanging off the sides of buses, talking on a cellphone while driving, and those blinking party lights which wreak havoc on the vision of even those with 20/20 sight seem, to me, to have gone into hiding since the new Road Traffic Act (RTA) became effective at the beginning of this month. I hope these dangerous and deadly behaviours stay in hiding permanently.

I did not see any wheelies which had become a veritable staple, especially among motorcyclists who do food delivery, all of last week. I rather doubt the absence of these daredevil stunts will have any negative impact on the quality of the food.

It was much easier to get around some sections of the Corporate Area for much of last week. Much of usual bumper-to-bumper snarls, mindless tooting of horns, automatic shouting of obscenities, and cut-throat overtaking seem to have taken a tranquilliser. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

Admittedly, it is far too early to celebrate. I suspect that the miscreants who cause havoc on our streets are waiting and watching to see if the rest of society is serious about permanently sidelining their terrors.

Simultaneous transition

As I see it, terrors in a society are usually slowed, interrupted, and/or halted by a critical mass who decide that they have had enough. It is the sustained actions of a critical mass which usually usher in paradigm-shifting behaviour changes. These changes often reduce and/or often nullify the quotient of terrors/horrors in a society.

I believe our society is going through a period of rapid internal simultaneous transition. In this context, institutions will be countermanded and occupations will become redundant. This will cause a temporary topsy-turvy state of affairs to exist. Some will lose their influence, others their authority, and some both.

A general state of unevenness, rapid evolution even, is par for the course. Different individuals with different interests, assess and pronounce upon change in understandably different ways. Here, firm and conscientious leadership has to, among other things, be a compass. Why? Those who want terror to be the status quo will insist that a premium should be placed on their interests — even at the expense or to the detriment of vast majority.

Last Monday, and less so Tuesday, some members of one taxi association, a minority one, which curiously call themselves OneVoice, went on a wildcat strike. Why? Some said they wanted a rescinding of the RTA? Some said they wanted revoking of what they said were inhumane penalties for non-payment of outstanding tickets some going back as far as 10 years. Others said the child restraint requirement — which, incidentally, came onto the books in 2001 and was debated by a joint select committee chaired by Dr Omar Davies — was the great fly in their ointment and they wanted it to disappear. Still others said the police needed to stop giving them tickets for what they categorised as “unnecessary things”.

The more I read and listened to the taxi operators who took strike action the more I realised that what they all really wanted was a climate in which the ‘same ole, same ole’ continued uninterrupted. To me, they did not have a scintilla of genuine concern for the safety and comfort of their passengers who are their bread and butter.

Not all taxi operators are cut from this crumpled material, but too many are.

Last week I said, among other things: “Our country is at a decisive crossroads. We can choose to make law and order a national staple or continue to clutch decades of disorder and mayhem. We can continue along the path of prudent financial discipline or destroy 17 years of national sacrifice and descend into a suicidal and foolhardy spending spree. We can either embrace common sense social order or hug even tighter to the devil take the hindmost bedlam, state of nature confusion, the fatalistic poison of ‘a suh di ting set’, or the moral relativistic mantra of ‘anything goes, anywhere, any time as long as it feels good’. We can cling to reasoned pragmatism or cuddle ideologies proven to be ruinous. We can tacitly or otherwise stay fixated on mediocrity or put a national premium on excellence. We can hold on to superstitious claptrap or embrace science and technology.”

I stand by every word.

Whether because of motivations rooted in collective innocence, ignorance, self-induced slumber, and/or self-defeating complicity, a law-abiding majority has remained dangerously silent while lawlessness reigned for decades. This is a recipe for permanent backwardness.

If we continue to give tighter embrace to lawlessness we will have no one to blame for our continual low levels of economic achievement, social decay, infrastructural setbacks, and all the numerous other problems that spring from a failure to “handle our business”, as the Americans put it. A country that does not handle its business, ultimately, is reduced to what a famous Caribbean man once called “mendicants holding flags”.

In 2007, then leader of the Jamaica Labour Party Bruce Golding said, among other things, at his party’s conference: “We believe we are too rich to be so poor, too gifted to to be so restricted, too blessed to be stressed, and too anointed to be so disappointed.”

As a country, I don’t believe we recognise our own total potential and how we are wasting it. This is a great sadness.

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good Government,” said Thomas Jefferson. If we cannot complete and cement the foundations to achieve this we might as well shut the shop and call it a day.

Avoiding Catastrophes

In its practical application the State cannot secure and preserve life, and/or promote happiness, if it cannot creatively and systematically avoid probable and predicable catastrophes.

What do I mean? For the last many years, for example, we have consistently had over 400 fatalities related to road crashes. Last Tuesday, Minister of Transport and Mining Audley Shaw noted that last year we had close to 500 deaths due to road crashes.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure that for a population with just under three million people our road deaths are catastrophically high. We all know some of the reasons for the wanton waste of life on our roads. Many people buy their licences, dangerous and reckless driving, speeding, driving while inebriated, over-laden and defective vehicles, and I could on. The majority of those being killed in road crashes are young people in the most productive period of their lives. National productivity has declined every year since the early 1970s, according to a 2018 finding by the Jamaica Productivity Centre. The implications here are clear.

No Administration worth its salt can sit idly by and watch the daily carnage on our streets. The awfulness of death and mayhem can be massively reduced by the enforcement of international best practices and culturally specific methods and measures that lessen probable and predictable catastrophes. Other countries have done it. I believe we can do it too.

I keep saying in this space that there is no Abrahamic curse which prevents Jamaica from achieving.

In a presentation in the House of Representatives last Tuesday Transport Minister Audley Shaw said the Government had listened to the complaints of the public and moved to effect changes. Shaw said that a compromise had to be made, given the realities of the public transportation sector in Jamaica — reasoned pragmatism. He also said that, “the Government has a responsibility to create laws that benefit the well-being of Jamaicans,” but that “there would be no compromise on the intent of the law and the safety of the commuting public — avoiding catastrophes.

The Andrew Holness-led Administration gets it. This augurs well for Jamaica.

Not about moneymaking

I am sure many of us have heard this loud whisper from many quarters and crevices: “The Government is using the new road traffic laws to make money off of the people’s head.”

I am not surprised that folks have arrived at this sort of deduction given how administrations have behaved in this country for decades.

While addressing National Land Agency’s Systematic Land Registration Land Titling Ceremony at New Forest High School, last Monday, Prime Minister Holness noted that the new Road Traffic Act “is not meant to punish citizens or simply collect revenue”. He added that Jamaica is entering a new dispensation of the enforcement of its laws.

“In the previous dispensation, you would never have this kerfuffle about the seat belt for children, because nobody believed it would be enforced. Now, everybody understands that the Government is serious about enforcement,” said Holness.

He also pointed out that: “The enforcement is about public order and public safety. Meaning your safety, which is what it is about, so I urge Jamaicans, don’t get caught up in some of the nonsense that is being said. Your country is changing right before your very eyes, but when you are in the midst of change it can appear confusing, chaotic and oftentimes imperceptible. But when the history is written, and you look back at this era and you ask yourself, ‘When did things change for traffic management and public order in Jamaica,’ the historians will have to point to this period in Jamaica’s history.” (Jamaica Observer, February 7, 2023)

Holness is evidently not obsessed with an idealistic rewriting of history, but with realpolitik or an engagement with Jamaica as it is. This makes eminent sense.

Regrettably, we have spent the better part of 30 of our 60 years of Independence sucked into wasteful ideological battles which have not appreciably advanced this country economically and socially. In the mentioned 60 years, we should have been preoccupied with the conversion of our society into one less prone to catastrophes. Why? This is a prerequisite of growth and development.

More than economic

On the point of national development, one does not need to be a transport economist to figure that our failure to transport goods and services more efficiently is costing this economy dearly. Reliable, affordable, and safe transportation, meaning road transport, railways, waterways, and airways, connects everyone to the things they need — jobs, goods, health care, education, and recreation.

Transportation is the lifeblood of the modern economy. An efficient national transportation network allows businesses to lower transportation costs, which in turn lowers production costs and costs to consumers.

Many make the mistake to think an efficient transportation system is merely about economics. They are wrong. An efficient transportation system is both economic and strategic. Among other things, it is a matter of national security, which is the most fundamental function of the State. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics and author of The Wealth of Nations, argued the three essential duties of Government are to provide security, preserve justice, and erect and maintain public works to facilitate commerce. Some argue that for a good to qualify as a public good, it must be non-excludable and non-rival. I won’t join that debate. I am more content to argue that efficient public transportation is good for everyone. Affordable public transport is not a luxury or liability, but a basic human right.

I believe that in the medium and long term we are going to have to decide whether the present system, which allows private individuals to hold the country to ransom, is consistent with the kind of growth and development which this country so urgently needs.

If after 60 years of political independence we do not have the smarts, as a country, to develop and maintain an efficient, reasonable, and decent public transportation system, then we might as well take down the black, green and gold and raise the Union Jack once again.

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist and a senior advisor to the minister of education & youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.