It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, and 6pm on a Sunday afternoon it was hunger that led to the following ingenuity (I use ingenuity loosely here). While at work, at approximately 3pm, I started to crave toast with jam and black coffee. I calculated that my colleague and I would finish up our duties around 4pm the latest and I should be home by then for some toast with jam and black coffee. As 4pm neared, we were called to address another issue that presented itself. Initial observation led us to believe that the issue could be addressed within 15 minutes, which wasn’t too bad, as it would only push back my toast and coffee time back about 20 minutes.
Murphy’s Law = the hungrier you are the longer it will take to get food! This law came into full effect as the simple issue that arose earlier had now consumed an hour of our time and was still not resolved. At 5:30pm things finally came to a conclusion and I made my way home. The issue now is not whether or not I’ll get my coffee but if I will get it on time. As most of you are aware coffee contains caffeine, which is a stimulant that can keep you awake. If I consume it later than 6pm there is a good chance I’ll be up at 3am writing food articles for the newspaper, so you can imagine my hesitancy to get home before the deadline.
As I dropped my colleague home, I decided to take an alternate route home. From Princess Margret Drive I made a right onto University Drive and then a left on Teacher St. (right behind the smaller UB campus). This is when the shenanigans began.
My first observation is that this street is very narrow. I’ve arrived to that conclusion every time I go down that street, and I guess it was a lapse in judgment compounded by a hunger for toast and coffee that made me turn down here again. As soon as I turned the corner, I realized what a mistake I made. In front of me was a taxi, coming towards us was another taxi, and parked on the side were two cars. For those of you who are familiar with this street (or any other street in Belize that is the width of your left foot) you can already imagine the congestion and confusion it will create. Both cars attempted to get to the other side by driving around the parked cars (‘cause history has taught us that it’s damn near impossible to get to the other side by trying to drive through the car).
The following minute was like a scene out of a movie. In an attempt to get through first, both cars ended up with their front bumpers facing each other. I guess they were also eager to get home for toast and coffee or Li Chee that neither moved for about five seconds. Both drivers commenced to reverse their car’s to allow the other to get through. Realizing what the other driver was doing both stopped reversing and quickly made their move to go forward, once again ending up bumper to bumper. This time their actions were punctuated with explicit words belted out in Creole. While this scene transpired, my blood sugar dropped below the national debt and my medical training kicked in, and I came up with the following conclusion: The person/people responsible for designing this street was suffering from an acute case of “Headuprectumitis”. This is what just left me perplexed- how is it a street engineered postcolonial era is smaller than streets that date back to the colonial era. An example of this would be Albert St. We are able to fit three cars (and a cart selling corn) side by side on Albert St., yet two cars can barely fit on this street, and many other streets. However, Albert St. is a one way street with parking on one side, and this is a two way street with parking wherever you feel like.
But I don’t want to be just another person who recognizes a problem and not be proactive about solving it. So I hereby propose the following law be enacted. It shall be titled the “Toast & Coffee Law”.
All streets will now be assigned a rating, TC1, TC2 etc… The number following TC will indicate the street’s capacity to handle the width of vehicles. TC1 means that the street is very narrow and it can only accommodate cars going in one direction and no parking. TC2 indicates the street’s capacity to accommodate two cars side by side, but it must be determined if it will be a two way street with no parking, or a one way street with parking on one side. Being that people will park wherever they may wish, it might be safer to assign TC2 as being a one way with parking on one side. TC3, TC4 etc…
The next question is what standard will be used to determine the width per vehicle as cars come in many different shapes and sizes. One, of several different types of vehicles that can be found throughout the country is the Coke delivery truck, so let’s use that as the standard. The width of one delivery truck will be considered TC1.
In San Pedro this law can be modified to GC1 (Golf Cart 1). Furthermore, if any future streets are designed with a rating of TC2 or less, the person should be forced to stand at the corner with a sign that reads, “You will be late because of me!”
So there, the street cleared up, I got my toast and coffee and Belize now has a new proposed traffic law. *For those of you who read the previous article “Intelligent & Civilized”, you will be pleased to know I did not burn my toast.
