October 25, 2011Dear Sir,I was asked by a visitor why there was so much damage visible on roadside walls and so many broken fences. Are Bermudians such bad drivers that they keep hitting them? I didn’t want to get into Bermudians’ unique driving habits but had to explain that the damage to the roadside walls was probably due to vehicles being too big for our roads. I was embarrassed to tell him that when the PLP gained Government in 1998 one of the first things they did was to import huge (for Bermuda) Ministerial cars. Unfortunately, these cars exceeded the allowable dimensions for cars in Bermuda so rather than admit the error and correct it; they changed the law to allow bigger and bigger vehicles into Bermuda.This new law applied to everybody and as we all know that the sale margins on bigger vehicles is higher than smaller ones, so some dealers used the new law to import big flashy cars, right up to and sometimes over the new limits. The damage is in part a result to the PLP’s overblown ego. We now have vehicles, trucks included, that were designed for US highways, not our roads which are sometimes narrower than private driveways in the States. One of our former UBP Premier’s used to ride around on a Mobylette and another used to walk around town to meetings and allowed time to meet “his people”. The PLP has mainly proven themselves to be style over substance.The visitor then went on to question the cost of having big cars on such a small island with a legal speed limit of just 20mph. I had to agree that smaller cars cost less to buy and maintain, so less foreign currency goes overseas. The biggest issue however is the fuel cost. These gas guzzlers use huge amounts of fuel that has to be purchased in that hard to get foreign currency. Unfortunately the PLP’s need to demonstrate their power in gaining Government by destroying a long established policy that controlled vehicles to the size that our roads could accommodate has probably resulted in more accidents, more damage and a lot more foreign currency leaving our shores than was necessary. Things haven’t improved in the last 13 years and now all of Bermuda is paying for the excesses of the PLP.They sure kept their eye on the prize.WATCH THAT WALL!Smith’s