Freddie Kissoon: I dimmed about forty times, and got eight responses. When on a dark street, a motorist flashes his/her light to an oncoming vehicle, he/she is telling that person that the high beams are blinding. It is an indication that the person cannot see.
What kind of heartless people have we brought up in this country? We wondered at the type of persons we produced in this society that would shoot children sleeping in their beds.
This happened in Lusignan in February 2008. Refusing to respond to a driver’s act of dimming would be a poor analogy if you are going to compare uncivilised behavioural manifestations among Guyanese.
Surely though, it doesn’t say much for the humanity of a person if you are telling them that you cannot see on the road to drive because their lights are blinding you, and they contemptuously ignore your plea.
You wonder what lies inside the mind of the human being. These very heartless creatures go home to their families after driving on the highways where they greet their spouse, hug their children.
But how do they explain to their loved ones that their refusal to be civilized has caused severe injuries to another driver because they blinded them into running off the road or into a moving vehicle? The three persons in Dale Andrews’s vehicle that night have families.
Colin and I have our respective families. Aren’t we entitled to go home to our loved ones? Can we be safe on the roads when on dark streets drivers refuse to take off their high beams?
We love to denigrate the minibus drivers, and most of the times they deserve our condemnation. However, on Tuesday night, out of those thirty-two vehicles that refused to dim, only twelve were minibuses. The rest consisted of persons who had fancy SUVs, expensive family cars and even luxury vehicles.
It tells you that the possession of money doesn’t come with good breeding. It also tells you that persons we associate with wealth and status may not be people with manners, etiquettes and civilized values. On entering the airport, it was enveloped in darkness.
I heard someone crying. Jawaharlal Nehru once wrote, “The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.”
