Dear readers, please permit me to deviate from the usual theme of Prime the Pump and, forgive me to be using this medium to vent…
Ask me any hour of the day, any day of the year, which is my favourite Caribbean country, and I will explicitly tell you that I have a special affinity with the Commonwealth of Dominica. Ask me why, and I will tell you – it’s the people that do it for me. I find the people of the Commonwealth of Dominica to be most civil and considerate and, there’s not a day as a driver in St. Vincent that I do not wish that Vincentians were more like their fellow Caribbean counterparts.

Let me make it clear, I am not saying that chivalry is dead in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I remember some years ago, one of my tyres blew out whilst driving in Kingstown and as soon as I pulled aside, a gentleman pulled up beside me and offered his assistance. A couple years later, I discovered that he was a sergeant in the Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force. A couple months ago, I had trouble on the road and a gentleman pulled up beside me and engaged the other passengers in his vehicle to get me out of my predicament. Those experiences, however, are few and far between.

Somehow, Dominicans still manage to maintain neighbourliness among people in general. They put people first. If you’re looking for direction, instead of telling you, “Go up so, and turn down so and then go up a little further…”, though heading in the opposite direction, they will turn back and show you where you need to be. If you’re parked at the side of the road, in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, instead of tooting their horns and shouting expletives at you to get out of the road, they would stop and ask if everything was okay.

Does making such comparison make me unpatriotic? No! It means that I remember when Vincentians were a lot more neighbourly than we are now and I prefer who we used to be back then. How and when did we become so uncouth? We are like ticking time bombs; anything sets us into a fit of rage and drivers are being verbally assaulted every day by lesser skilled drivers. I am weary of the onslaught that takes place on the roads of St. Vincent and the Grenadines man to man, man to woman, woman to woman and no doubt, woman to man. Today, I choose to focus on man to woman because it’s the most common that I have experienced. It got me wondering, what exactly is the role of men in our society. Apparently, in primitive years, the main role of men was to be providers. It is said that their role has evolved since then, they are now meant to be protectors and providers. However, if for the most part, they aren’t providers or protectors – what on earth are they?

Long ago, women had the reputation of being incompetent drivers. So, if someone was driving ahead of you and they were driving slowly or were having problems manoeuvring the vehicle, the comment would be “I’m sure that’s a woman.” However, the skills of women drivers have evolved. They are more responsible and a lot more skilled than male drivers. Data made available by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, USA (NHTSA) shows that men are responsible for 32 percent more accidents than women. On average, men cause approximately six million accidents per year, whereas women cause an average of around four million collisions. I believe that men are also responsible for a higher percentage of accidents in the Caribbean.

Some months ago, I keenly noted an article that appeared in the local news, titled “Woman wins traffic case in which COP was the main prosecution witness.” If you haven’t read the story, google it and read it. I am glad that female driver was responsible enough to assess the situation and make an informed decision not to put herself in harm’s way even though it landed her in court. After all, if women are the ones who “can’t drive”, shouldn’t men be the ones to show off their driving skills by manoeuvring their vehicles out of difficult positions they put them in?

Recently, a friend recounted her experience of being cornered between a precipice and a vehicle being driven by a man. His main concern being, who would fix his vehicle if he went into the pothole and damaged something as a result. Meanwhile, he acknowledged that if she moved an inch further, it could have dreadful consequence. Still, he insisted that the driver behind her reverse so that she could reverse to prevent him from driving into a pothole. It took the male driver behind her to come out of his vehicle and deal with him “man to man” to get him to move his vehicle.

By now you must have realized that it was one too many of those experiences that tilted the balance for me and caused me to deviate from my usual theme.
There are so many drivers on the roads of St. Vincent and the Grenadines with driver’s licenses because of a favour done for someone. They have never been tutored and never took a driver’s examination. This my friend aggravates the irrational behaviours of drivers on the road.

If one of the main roles of men is to protect, shouldn’t it then be an established behaviour i.e, be it your wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunty or grandmother – shouldn’t the instinctive reaction then be to protect the woman from harm? How, then can you compartmentalize the woman, if she is not related treat her therefore as a man with the same level of respect you have for yourself. Furthermore, as a father, a husband, a son, a brother, shouldn’t you want a fellow brother to extend the courtesies to your wife, your mother, your daughter, your sister that you would extend to them yourself?

Someone said to me recently that society has emasculated our boys and men. My stance remains, we are who we are, not because of what was done to us but because of who we choose to be – life is more a decision than anything else. So, what are we going to do about this mess?