Highway menace

Three passengers counting their blessings, a wrecked Mitsubishi Pajero and a dead cow were the grim remnants of a frightening late-night collision last week on the May Pen-to-Mandeville leg of the toll highway.

Stray cattle had breached the fencing and wandered onto the dark roadway, where vehicles travel at speeds of up to 110 mph.

Ardent cricket fan Hopeton McCatty, former legislator Wensworth Skeffery and his daughter Adria were heading back to Manchester after attending a Jamaica Kingsmen match at Sabina Park. The team is representing Jamaica in the Caribbean Premier League T20 competition now being played across the region.

McCatty, who was driving, said he was travelling at the required speed, keeping his attention on the road while chatting with Skeffery, a former Jamaican senator, about life, politics and family.

“I was coming from Sabina Park with Skeffery, who took his daughter to see cricket for the first time. It’s a good thing it was Skeffery because, if it was me alone, I would have been dead,” McCatty told The Gleaner.

“We were talking about life stuff, being humble, laughing and having fun, when Skeffery shouted, ‘Cow!’. Immediately, I hit the brakes and swung to the right and came down to about 60 mph. If I had hit the cow at 110 mph, all of us would have been dead,” McCatty said with a laugh, while expressing gratitude to God for sparing their lives.

Longstanding problem

The vehicle spun after striking the animal, and McCatty said he was initially disoriented because the impact immediately knocked out all the vehicle’s lights.

“I was not panicking, not knowing where I was, but some cars passed me on the right-hand side, so I realised I was on the left-hand side. After that, a wrecker man came on the scene and put on the hazard light because, not knowing where I was, something could have come and slammed into us. It was pitch dark. You couldn’t see your hand before your face,” McCatty said.

The crash happened about a mile from the toll plaza.

McCatty said the presence of cows on the highway, and the resulting danger to motorists, has been a longstanding problem. He said a friend recently described a similar encounter in which more than one cow jumped the barriers and moved into his path.

“So, based on that, the cows are not only coming across the roads, but climbing the barriers and hampering traffic in the opposite direction. This is just crazy. Luckily, in my case, it just came across the road,” McCatty said.

He said the dangerous situation reflected a longstanding failure to adequately protect motorists.

“Some places had railing. But some areas do have no railing at all. So, if the cow comes through the fence, they are calling off a free path,” he explained, while acknowledging that there is also a dispute over responsibility because, at times, unscrupulous individuals have removed sections of the railing.

McCatty said that, had his wife been travelling with him, she might have been asleep and would not have been in a position to alert him to the danger.

He said the cow’s throat appeared to have been slit by material from the bonnet. The animal was tagged 133 JM 110 - 33516, but its owner or owners remain unknown.

‘If it wasn’t for God’

Skeffery, meanwhile, said he was simply grateful that they survived the crash.

“If it wasn’t for God, we would be deceased. I took my daughter Adria to see the match and it was the first one the Kingsmen won. We were joking and telling her she brought them luck, and just generally talking about life and how fortunate we were compared to others. So nobody was asleep or even dozing,” Skeffery said yesterday.

He said that, when he shouted “Cow!”, McCatty instinctively swerved right, although the animal was positioned to the left front of the vehicle, where Skeffery was seated as the passenger.

The collision dislodged the battery, leaving the vehicle without lights. With the roadway shrouded in darkness, Skeffery said the arrival of the wrecker shortly afterwards brought some visibility to the scene.

“But our greatest fear was that we would be hit by incoming traffic because we did not know where we were, and we were also wondering how the vehicle did not overturn. It must be because of the thanks we were giving God,” he theorised.

Photographs from the scene also showed that both airbags had deployed.

Skeffery said he suffered whiplash, although the symptoms disappeared the following morning. His daughter sustained bruises to her hands.

The Gleaner was not able to reach representatives of the toll authority for comment yesterday.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com