Yesterday, I was driving along Campbell Street (one of the main streets in Freetown) going down towards St John. The traffic was a bit heavy and cars were doing the usual “fɛt fɔ ed”. A police officer was standing there at the round about as usual, with arms folded and she was staring at the drivers struggling to make their way but pretending to be an ordinary observer, doing NOTHING about the situation. After a few drivers almost crashed their vehicles and a few swear words thrown here and there, the police officer decided to intervene and do what she was supposed to be doing in the first place.
She stopped the vehicles going toward St John and called those coming from Sanders street. A few seconds after the traffic started moving; three public vehicles just cut the traffic and went straight down Savage Street at very high speed. They did not go around the turn table like drivers are meant to do; they did not blow their horns to alert people to move out of the way, they did not have sirens on to signal an emergency, NOTHING!
This is not the first time I’ve seen this. Public vehicles drive recklessly with no regard for life or safety.
Even at night, they drive in high speed with their lights on full beam blinding other drivers and causing them to almost go off the roads.
At the end of the day, when lives are lost or people get injured NOTHING IS DONE! The drivers still keep their jobs and they continue driving carelessly.
Apart from the life of pedestrians and other road users, these drivers not even care about the vehicles themselves. They treat public property anyhow and again, NOTHING IS DONE! But thinking about it again, how can something be done when in certain cases it is their bosses who tell these drivers to behave the way they do?
If our leaders cannot handle little things such as how their drivers use public vehicles then how can we trust them with running the whole country?
What is being done to police officers who are on duty but just stand like dummies with arms folded, daydreaming waiting for an accident to happen before they wake up?
What is being done to public drivers who do not adhere to road safety laws?
The answer is……..NOTHING!
