FOR ALMOST all his seven years at Combermere School, every time Junior Jordan hopped on to a bus, he would dart to the seat directly behind the drivers and watch eagerly as they manoeuvred the Albion buses.
It was in the late 1960s into the early 1970s that buses were outfitted with bent gear sticks that were changed with double-clutching rather than the regular single-clutching.
And Jordan would admire a Mr Greaves in particular, wondering how he got the bus to move and changed the gears so smoothly.
On top of that, there were questions galore that he would ask and, like the other drivers, Greaves was more than willing to offer words of advice. It was back then that Jordan developed a deep interest in driving.
So much so that having earned his driver’s licence in 1973, he began offering driver’s education a short while later, beginning with a mere two clients and increasing to hundreds over time.
For more than half of his 60 years this driving expert has dedicated his life to improving road safety not solely in Barbados, but throughout the Caribbean.
Junior Jordan says it is important to have a blind spot mirror as part of the side mirror to help with visibility when behind the steering wheel.
Road safety is one of the most important aspects of Jordan’s life, to the extent that for the father of one, teaching an individual how to drive goes beyond passing a test. It is about passing on possible life-saving information.
Jordan said that he learnt this virtue of sharing from his mother Joyce Jordan.
Raised in Tichbourne, St Michael, with his five siblings, Jordan said growing up was fantastic.
“We came up in the church. I was involved in community work from the time I was a teenager, having been involved in the Anglican Youth Association and the St Barnabas 4H Club. There were six of us (three boys and three girls) and she instilled in us the whole idea of giving. As The Bible says, it is better to give than to receive.
“If you went to my mother’s home now, she would not let you leave there empty-handed. She would find something to give to you – a plant, food, anything she had. It is just the idea of giving and not expecting anything in return. That was how she raised us.”
This was why his life revolved around sharing information. Even though he doesn’t do as much road work now in terms of taking clients in for licences, he is still very active through advanced training.
Jordan has undergone extensive training in Canada and has been a member of the Canada Safety Council since 1981. Additionally, he is known to avail himself of driving manuals from across the world to ensure his information is always current.
“I’ve done a lot of training and I basically do training to pass on information that I have learned to anybody who is willing to take that information, whether it is a bicyclist, motorcyclist, truck driver, pedestrian.
“I have done presentations in Brazil, driver training in Guyana, Grenada, St Maarten, and this is not only driver training with private citizens. This includes commercial training on oil tankers, buses and trucks, but the satisfaction I get is in terms of giving, in seeing people take this information and use it to their advantage – driving better.”
Jordan proposed re-education as the path to success in any area of endeavour. As it relates to driving, there are also many changes. For example, the old method of steering at 10 to 2 has long been revised to a quarter to three since the advent of airbags. Therefore, the learning curve, in his opinion, should never stop even if a person has been driving for numerous years.
“There is always room for improvement, room for a refresher and retraining. Even me, even though I have been doing training, very often I would go somewhere and be trained myself and do a lot of research in terms of finding out about things that have changed.
“If we can get more people in Barbados retraining and driving for the other person, rather than to be thinking only about themselves, the more than 100 000 licensed drivers in Barbados could use all of these roads without a single collision.
“It is a big ask but people [should] stop thinking ‘I have learnt it all; I have been driving for 40 or 50 years; there isn’t anything you can teach me’, which is the first mistake you make.
“Every single person should never consider that he or she has learnt enough. Always open the mind to learn about something new,” Jordan added. (SDB Media)
Junior Jordan says it is important to have a blind spot mirror as part of the side mirror to help with visibility when behind the steering wheel. (Picture by SDB Media.)