Government will have to do more to put the brakes on frequent accidents at the Mangrove junction in St Philip, some residents and the President of the Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA) Sharmane Roland-Bowen have suggested.
On Tuesday night, on the heels of a recent spate of accidents, the latest occurring last Sunday, work crews from the Ministry of Transport Works and Water Resources erected a four-way traffic stop at the location.
Reduce speed signs and stop signs were installed at Mangrove Main Road, which is the Four Roads to Airport stretch of the road. Previously, stop signs and reduce speed signs were only placed along the two minor roads at Mangrove and Market Road.
While residents welcomed the initial action as a positive step, they were not convinced it would deliver the intended results and suggested that either a roundabout or traffic lights might be a better solution.
Longtime resident Egbert Lashley, who was watching the crews on the job on Tuesday night, told Barbados TODAY that as far as he was concerned, the four-way traffic stop is only a “temporary measure”.
Lashley, who is in his 70s, lamented that there were far too many accidents at the junction – as many as one per month.
He suggested the busy intersection will need much more.
“This is a temporary measure. The correct thing to do is to build a roundabout,” he said.
A younger resident, Darren Lashley, 27, also expressed doubt that the change will make a difference.
“Honestly, with people that not accustomed passing here, they may still come through the junction as a normal one-way on both lanes. So I honestly don’t think it would be worth the trouble. I think that it is more worth it putting a mini roundabout or using stop lights,” he said.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Deputy Chief Technical Officer (Operations) Philip Tudor explained that the four-way traffic stop was erected in an effort to improve safety at the location. He pointed out that a similar sign had been placed successfully at a junction in the Ivy, St Michael where a number of car accidents had occurred.
“Motorists are urged to approach all four legs of the Mangrove junction with caution and to pay close attention to the newly erected signage,” the statement urged.
But BRSA President Sharmane Roland-Bowen, although acknowledging it was a step in the right direction to correct the longstanding problems at the Mangrove junction, called for an immediate public education campaign to ensure road users can correctly use the four-way traffic stop.
“They need to educate the public how to use this junction, if not there are still going to get some collisions there. So, the correct procedures need to be put in place so people will be educated . . . . For instance, if two people get to that four cross at the same time, who goes first? . . . . Who should give way to who?
“People need to be aware of it and know how to use a four-way junction safely because all over Barbados we have stop signs and we know a stop sign [doesn’t] stop a vehicle, the driver stops the vehicle, so the driver has to be aware that at all four junctions, all four roads, traffic needs to stop,” she said.
Roland-Bowen added: “Our laws are based on the UK system and the UK system [doesn’t] use those four ways. It is the American system that uses the four-way procedures and with the US you know they drive on the right hand side of the road, so their rules that govern would more or less be the opposite of our rules because of how we drive on the left hand side, so I do believe it is a remedial measure still.”
The road safety advocate noted that while the four-traffic stop is currently in operation at Wavell and The Ivy, St Michael, drivers on these routes tend to drive slower because they were in neighbourhoods, compared to the Mangrove Road where there is a lot of speeding.
