Road safety film highlights bad habits
Bermuda’s road safety standards are worse than some countries that have to deal with roadside bombs, a new documentary film has highlighted.
The $2000 film was created by Simon Parkinson after his motorbike was rear ended twice in a week.
Mr Parkinson, from Smith’s, said: “I did research looking at international reports and it was eye opening.
“We have worse road safety than countries with road side bombs.”
He added Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Cambodia had lower road death rates than Bermuda in 2018.
Mr Parkinson, a senior sytems analyst at an insurance firm, said: “I looked at judicial reports issued on the island.
“There is a section in the film on mobile phones – between 2017 and 2018 there were zero tickets written for cell phone use, but it is rampant.”
The 35-minute Bermuda, We have a Problem was created by Mr Parkinson using a helmet-mounted camera.
He filmed almost three hours of bad driving from April to August last year and edited it down to just over half an hour.
Mr Parkinson said he paid for the film to highlight the dangers on the roads.
He added: “I wanted to make people aware so even if one person slows down and arrives alive it was worth every penny.
Mr Parkinson said: “People see it all the time, but they only see it in a limited fashion. You see the same people do it day after day. It is habitual.
“I want to make people think about slowing down and stopping at the stop sign, leaving a few minutes earlier rather than making up time because they are late.
“The end card is we can’t fix any problem until we admit we have one.”
The film made the official selection of four film festivals – the London International Motion Picture Awards 2020 in the UK, Lift-Off Global Network 2020 in Tokyo, Japan, the Melkbos Short Film Festival 2020 in Cape Town, South Africa and the International Shorts 2019 in Melbourne, Australia.
It got a special mention at the Melkbos festival.
The documentary, with original music by Liam Bradbury, is narrated by Khari Thornhill who provides statistics and breaks down dangerous situations captured on camera.
The documentary is available on YouTube and can be used free of charge for educational reasons.
To watch the film, visit https://youtu.be/6SuJ_NFC488
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