EDITORIAL — I wrote this on my personal blog, TICO BULL, and felt compared to share it here.
Reckless driving is a common DAILY practice on Costa Rica’s roads. The worst, in my opinion, are the taxi drivers, moreso the informal (pirata in Spanish) taxi drivers, acting like the own the road, the sidewalk, any open space.
For the most part every day many, many get lucky. But sometimes it doesn’t all work out, like for the three ladies in Guatuso, Alajuela, Tuesday afternoon.
[su_pullquote]Yesterday morning I wrote about the mad dashers, hours later four people were dead to another serious problem on the country’s roads, the reckless driver.[/su_pullquote]According to the police report, the three women were riding in a pirata taxi when it collided head on with a tractor trailer. All four – the three ladies and driver – were dead at the scene. Miraculously a fifth person in the vehicle, 25 year old Yéiner Martínez Cruz survived the accident and is currently in hospital in delicate condition.
The women who died in the accident were identified as, Asunción Cruz Álvarez, 84, and her two daughters, Julieta and Agustina Martínez Cruz, 45 and 50, respectively. The driver was identified as 36 year old Robinson Barrera Rojas.
The accident report says there was no rain at the time of the accident, although there had been a heavy rain fall hours earlier. The Hyundai passenger vehicle slammed head-on with the trailer. The passenger vehicle was torn apart and ended up in a ditch, the trailer hit a tree.
The driver of the truck, a man identified by his last name Solías Alfaro, walked away without a scratch. The 34 year old driver was hauling a load of pineapple headed for the Limón port.
The only reason this accident made the headline in La Nacion and my reason for writing about it is for the number of fatalities.
Sadly we are used to it, numbed when perusing the daily pages of the Diario Extra or La Teja, amid the scantily clad women: two items that sell newspapers, the reason the Extra touts itself as the most sold newspaper in the country and La Teja, a Nacion publication, at its heels.
I have been driving since I was 16 – more than 4 decades ago. But, only recently I have come to not want to drive, every time getting behind the wheel I am reminded of the stupidity that goes on by drivers who are probably the nicest people, until they get behind the wheel.
