ALCOHOL IS BELIEVED to be a factor in many of the motor vehicle accidents occurring between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.
Word of this comes from vice-president of the General Insurance Association of Barbados (GIAB) Anton Lovell, who threw GIAB’s support behind calls for Breathalyzer testing and the banning of cellphone use while driving.
“These are no fender benders. These are very serious accidents and people are losing their lives,” he said, during a Press conference at Co-operators General Insurance’s Independence Square office last week.
“I don’t know how much longer it will take now for that to be brought into law but we need to have this legislation passed as quickly as possible.”
Lovell added that most insurance companies now had emergency response vehicles which went to accident scenes, and employees reported that drivers often appeared to be under the influence of alcohol.
GIAB?president Michael Holder added: “They’re incoherent, they’re stumbling, you can smell the alcohol. There’s not the Breathalyzer [test] as yet, so there is no way of proving that the person is drunk.
But certainly, there is a school of thought that if it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it looks like a duck, chances are it is a duck.”
Holder also noted that the use of cellphones while behind the wheel was suspected to be a factor in the increased number of rear end collisions. (NB)
