Inviting liability out of negligence

The Issue: When power goes off disabling traffic lights, motorists are left to fend for themselves, an invitation to incurring public liability.

Our View: Prompt coordination among government agencies is needed to ensure public safety on intersections.

It isn’t the third nor the fourth time that we observe traffic lights disabled by unannounced power outages between the southern end of the island to the foot of the hill at Sadog Tase where motorists must fend for themselves out of courtesy.

On each occasion, nobody is there to direct traffic which endangers public safety and adds to congestion as motorists or tour and school bus drivers negotiate their way across intersections.

The confusion intensifies when an emergency vehicle (police car, fire truck or an ambulance) attempts to enter the main highway. The emergency response of these calls for assistance is unnecessarily delayed right smack in intersections where traffic lights are non-functional forcing motorists to quiz how to make way for the emergency vehicle. It’s a confusing situation in congested traffic intersections. And it is an invitation for local government to incur big time liability.

This dire situation can easily be resolved by appropriate agencies coordinating their activities, i.e., CUC calling the Department of Public Safety that certain traffic lights are down. In turn, DPS informs the Department of Public Works to get its well paid crew to reset the system. Is this too difficult for our hardworking public servants? Need the local government incur liability because one or all of these agencies failed to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility on such simple matter?

We hope that overtime money isn’t a factor in ascertaining public safety when traffic lights are temporarily disabled by power outages. This dire situation isn’t a picnic either for it is an invitation to liability lawsuits born out of negligence on the part of all agencies assigned the fiduciary duty to ensure public safety.
For hefty salaries paid these employees through our hard earned tax contributions, we say the public deserves nothing less than prompt service 48 hours a day.

It’s simple common sense that we seem to have neglected with the usual mañana syndrome. Let not there be traffic fatality out of this neglect before someone lifts a finger. Si Yuus Maase`!