Officers at the Traffic Division of the Royal Bahamas Police Force are concerned about the rising amount of hit and run accidents occurring. There have been fifty such incidents thus far this year. Head of the Traffic Division, Chief Superintendent, David Lockhart spoke to ZNS News on the issue stating, “we find this to be very alarming because some of the persons or pedestrians that are involved have serious injuries. But we want to send a caution out to the pedestrian public that when there is no pedestrian crossing you have to ascertain the way clear before crossing the street.”
Unlicensed and uninsured vehicles and motorists are said to be a part of most accidents. Chief Superintendent Lockhart said, “what we know and the vehicles that we are finding, we find they were not insured, not licensed at the time or the drivers don’t have a drivers license. On Sunday past we had an operation and in that operation we ticketed almost two hundred persons and I would tell you about 45% of those persons that were ticketed were unlicensed, uninsured vehicles.”
Lockhart also spoke to pedestrian error saying, “its not all the time that once a pedestrian is struck by the vehicle, the vehicle is at fault. Because we do find cases where we have pedestrian error and when we have pedestrian error then that creates a problem because people feel that they don’t get justice because they were hit and they have injuries and as far as they’re concerned once I’m hit the person who hit me should be at fault. But that is not always the case.”
In light of the amount of unsolved hit and run cases that exists, the Chief Superintendent appealed to the public for any information they may have relevant to these cases. He also said that motorist can expect more saturation patrols.
