For those who may be curious as to why I call the victims of road traffic accidents “crash dummies”, it is because of a series of ads shown on television in Trinidad and Tobago way back when. The ads were ‘hosted’ by crash dummies who advised on safety when driving, or being a passenger in moving vehicles. At the end of each ad, the crash dummies were called back to work…
Not many people may remember these ads, but I recall them each day I see a news item like this one:
Mother, son die in car crash
Now, after reading these news items, I liken these victims to those dummies (pun intended) whose jobs it was to visually demonstrate to us the dangers lurking on the roads.
Do I feel sympathy for them? Occasionally.
Readers may find that to be harsh, after all, some drivers can be said to have received a ‘bad drive’, or innocent children may die…
Frankly, in the first instance, I can’t really feel sympathetic to parents losing a child in the circumstances linked above… a child 10 years old ought to be in bed on a school night at 1:45 AM. Considering that the grandparents lived upstairs of the mother’s home, she can’t have claimed that she had no one to look after him. In fact, the grandparents claim that the child grew up with them.
In the second instance, I can’t see that the bridge jump out in front of of them. Therefore it has to be driver error. IT ALWAYS IS. Whether the driver was speeding, tired, drunk, we may never know, but it is always the fault of the driver, as it is in this case.
Still, another thought came to mind. After the last accident in which a bridge was damaged, I see another opportunity for Imbert-cile to claim compensatory damages from the driver for the bridge. In this case, the driver is alive, if not well. It should not be too hard. I hope he moves as swiftly in this case, as in the other.
