McKinley Eugene, the young man killed on Tonique Williams-Darling Highway last week, had no driver's license. According to police, of late they have seen a worrying increase in similar cases of unlicensed drivers taking to the streets.
"We find that many of our young persons, between the ages of 17 and 30, many of that age bracket of drivers are not in possession of driver's licenses," explained Superintendent Craig Stubbs. "These are persons who have driven a vehicle, gotten some experience and have continued to drive."
Stubbs went on to note that this is a trend police are finding very difficult to tackle, as it only comes to their attention when an unlicensed youngster is stopped for a traffic violation, or when a traffic accident occurs. As in the case of McKinley Eugene, often by then it is too late. At the same time, police are not completely powerless in the face of this new phenomenon.
As Stubbs noted, many of these young, unlicensed drivers are operating vehicles that are also uninsured.
"What they will normally do is have a family member of a friend insure or license a vehicle for them," he said. "They own the vehicle, but they do not hold a driver's license. [The vehicle] is not insured or is not registered in their name."
While it may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for an officer to tell whether the average passing driver has a driver's license, there is a great deal the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) can do to prevent these individuals from getting on the road in the first place. No car in The Bahamas should be able to pass annual inspection without being insured.
Traffic police are mandated to look out for, interdict and sanction any vehicle that is not insured, and the codification issued by the Road Traffic Department is designed to make it easy for law enforcement to identify cars that are not current in terms of inspection. Therefore, there can only be two reasons why a significant number of uninsured vehicles are being driven on our streets: Either police are negligent in their identification of vehicles that have not passed annual inspection, or the inspectors themselves are giving the green light to cars that are uninsured. On both counts, the RBPF is in a position to take meaningful action.
In the first instance, Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade has made much of the idea that the force should follow an annual policing plan. Renewed effort on the part of traffic and other officers to identify unlicensed cars could easily become part of the focus for 2015.
In the second instance, if Road Traffic is licensing vehicles that do not have insurance, it is well within the purview of police to investigate this trend and bring appropriate charges against the perpetrators. One thing is for certain - the worrying trend of unlawful driving, which contributed to the death of McKinley Eugene and perhaps many others, must be stopped in its tracks before it takes any more lives.
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