Mark the potholes!
As motorists again begin to battle potholes on our roads, the authorities are being urged to move with alacrity to get these road hazards fixed.
The call has come from President of the Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA), Sharmane Roland-Bowen, who is warning that unless serious steps are taken now, it will not be long before the situation becomes as bad as it was late last year and at the beginning of this year.
Moreover, she is calling on the Ministry of Transport and Works to ensure that where there are potholes that they have not fixed, that they put adequate warnings in place so that motorists can better avoid them.
“We are falling in them because we are not seeing them. This is the time of the year that we are getting a lot of rain and when the rain falls they become hidden, so I would like
the authorities to reconsider marking these potholes until they can get them properly fixed. Remember when they tried marking the holes with paint? That’s not enough; that’s not working because the puddles of water will cover the paint and the potholes,” she contended.
Roland-Bowen added, “These potholes needs to be fixed and until they are fixed they should highlighted, because the situation is even worse now as the expense that could be associated with fixing damage caused by a pothole will be even more now because the cost of vehicle parts have gone up. So it is time to swallow pride and do what is right.”
As such, the road safety advocate is imploring the Ministry to employ a remedy similar to the “pothole marker flags” the BRSA used early this year to help motorists to identify where the dangers lie. She is adamant those yellow flags were quite effective in helping drivers to easily identify where large potholes were, which meant that they were not swerving into oncoming traffic or stopping suddenly to avoid them.
“Most if not all of the areas where we erected our flags were fixed and it seems that the flags were confiscated, so it would be an additional expense now for us to do that initiative again, but if anyone is willing to sponsor a flag, we would be happy to go back out there and put them up,” she stated. (JRT)