Dear Editor,
It’s Wednesday, January 6. I’m on my way from up in the Philipsburg Valley to my weekly tennis doubles match in Cole Bay. Or so I thought. One of my tennis buddies got over the hill 5 minutes before, as I find myself dead stuck next to Kooyman for 20 minutes. Traffic coming down G.A. Arnell Rd. blocks cars going up, and vice versa. Nothing moves. And of course I’m dumb enough to succumb to the impatience of many others, and turn around to take a detour up, only to find out it’s that road that’s being closed, and losing another 30 minutes before I get to where I would have been 20 minutes before if I waited just that little bit longer.
Finally, up and over the hill I look down, and see everything jammed there as well, all the way to the end of Union Rd., close to the border. The entire Dutch side of the island is jammed. I’m 1.5 hours late, and besides my buddy nobody else came to play that day. The courts, normally buzzing, were empty.
But all that is not the point. Two motorbikes crashed into each other, and one of them died. Impatience took that guy’s life. We all lost a bit of ours as well, but we’re still here. Waiting for it to happen again. It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often. Most of these guys on motorbikes drive like they’re Valentino Rossi on steroids. Grand Theft Motorbike, but zero points and not an extra life. They had it coming, collectively, and so it did.
That’s what happens if law enforcement on our roads remains absent, only to be there when things have gone wrong. Drunk driving is another thing, for that matter. I know so many people admitting to it, telling me they do because they can. If only the police would be there every now and then, all those people might think twice, or think at all for once.
Arjen Kolthof
