Look de Newsday editorial this morning:
http://www.newsday.co.tt/editorial/0,106578.htmlDoh mind the editorial have spelling mistakes.
Dead baby
Wednesday, September 2 2009
ON MONDAY, August 31,2009 our front page should have been covered in the national colours and we should have wished everyone the old clich “Happ Independence”.
Instead, we printed a photograph of a baby lying at the side of the Solomon Hochoy Highway in the grass. The infant was dead. The photo was meant to shock. And shock it did judging by the letters and telephone calls we received accusing us of insensitivity, lack of human decency, disgraceful and such like comments.Like readers we were pained to see this photograph of a one-yearold beautiful doll-like child lying dead in a patch of grass. But we deliberately, and after much thought, published the photo in the hope, which we hope will not be in vain, to sensitise people about the escalating carnage on our roads. The figure to date is 139.
One writer asked where was our “human decency” We ask: where was the human decency in a one year- old baby sitting on its mother’s lap in a vehicle driven on our roads where there is so much recklessness, so much disregard for life? Why was this infant not secured in a seat in the back seat of the car? We have photographs of very young children hanging out of the windows of speeding cars. We have a photo of a toddler standing up in the front seat of a car on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway. One reader indignantly spoke of the hurt and trauma felt by mothers who saw the photograph. If that hurt is translated into ensuring safety on the road in future, we would have succeeded in our purpose.
Mere weeks ago, five people including three young children died in a road accident travelling in a panel van, carrying 14 people with no seat belts. Last weekend a man walking on the shoulder of the highway was dismembered of arms and feet when struck by a speeding car. It would take up the entire newspaper to decribe the carnage on our roads. It is carnage for which as drivers we are responsible. We are glad that people are suddenly sensitive about the victims of road accidents, but and as usual, the messenger is blamed and the message is ignored, until the next one dies.
If by publishing this utterly shocking photo we succeed in getting drivers to stop speeding, to stop driving drunk, to secure their babies in the back seat and by so doing to save the life of at least one innocent baby we would consider our decision, which was not taken lightly, to have achieved something.
Any road traffic death is a tragedy, even when the death may be “self-inflicted” by reckless driving, or excessive speed. Unfortunately, it is the innocent, too often, who die in traffic accidents. And when one of these innocents is a young baby, the tragedy is even more pronounced.
We believe that we have to do something to end the slaughter on our roads. Because we all need to accept that the horror of road deaths, and especially deaths of infants, needs to be faced and acknowledged for what they are. We need to accept that the vast majority of our road deaths are caused by speeding and by unsafe practices in the vehicles.
In this tragedy, the vehicle allegedly “went out of control” upon approaching the Gasparillo Flyover. Now, this area has been dubbed a “Death Strip” because of the number of vehicles which “go out of control” on the curved approach to the flyover. Several large signs have been erected along the approach to the flyover, urging motorists to reduce their speed. Yet the carnage continues.
Whatever euphemisms we create for speeding and reckless driving, these seem to imply that vehicles, like skittish racehorses, suddenly get out of control and kill innocent people.
The truth is, and we must face this, as hurtful as it may be to families of those who die in these incidents, that the accidents are caused by drivers speeding and driving recklessly, not by vehicles losing control. Accept this: Speeding or intoxicated drivers are responsible.
Holding an infant in one’s lap in the front passenger seat of the car, is recognised as a most dangerous way to allow infants to travel. In fact it is illegal in civilsed societies. Children need to be restrained in special cradle-type seats set on the rear seat of vehicles. No one, notwithstanding all the love in the world, can hold on to a child set on their lap, when a vehicle gets into an accident. Baby Nevi Vionna never had a chance to survive any crash that may have occurred with her father’s car, even if the car was hit from behind and the accident was not his fault.
We are deeply concerned about the needless loss of life on our nation’s roads. We have addressed this concern on this page in the past. It is this concern that makes us ask: What can we do to stop this carnage?
It hurt us all at Newsday to place Baby Nevi’s photograph on our front page on Independence Day. We are all family people too. But our decision was taken because we felt we had to bring the stark reality of the loss of infants’ lives to you in a manner to make you stop and think. To shock you. We accepted that some of you would be offended. So be it. But for all those of you who were hurt by the sight of this unfortunate infant, we hope that you also commit yourself to ensuring that no child will ever die in a car driven by you.