With Jamaica recording more than 170 road fatalities since the start of this year, the Jamaica Observer Online, in association with a number of partners, has produced a supplement dubbed NO NEED FOR SPEED, which looks at all aspects of the carnage on the roads. This is a lightly edited version of one of the many stories in the supplement which can be accessed at https://www.flipsnack.com/AA895DF569B/no-need-for-speed-june-2024/full-view.html.

In the blink of an eye, a motor vehicle crash can change lives forever. For some, it may be a fatal encounter — a final, fleeting moment of existence. While for others, it might be a life-shattering experience which leaves them forever changed, never to feel whole again.

Rean Palmer’s life changed on June 14, 2022 when he was hit from his motorcycle by a driver trying to “catch the light” at the Maxfield and Chisholm avenues intersection in St Andrew.

“I stopped at an intersection and I was like, ‘Take that side or this side?’ and my mind told me to take Maxfield Avenue. I ride down Maxfield Avenue and when I reached Chisholm Avenue, stopped at the stoplight… and is like a car coming from Chisholm trying to catch the light. I was at the light and he came straight cross the road and hit me off the bike and I was knocked out cold,” Palmer shared with the Jamaica Observer. “I was under a helmet and I was knocked out cold. My face was burst up. My leg was broken [in] two different spot and they took me to hospital. I lost a tooth.”

Palmer said he was initially told he would have to do surgery, but due to recurring delays at Kingston Public Hospital he remained in casts for seven months when his leg started to heal.

“When the cast just came off I couldn’t walk. They were telling me I had to do physiotherapy but I didn’t do any. I stayed at home and do my own little therapy. So I couldn’t walk as yet, my toes couldn’t bend, my foot couldn’t bend and stuff so I had to stay home and take my time and work it out, like use warm towel and put on it so I can get the foot flexible so I can apply pressure on it,” he said, adding that he had to walk with sticks for two months before he could fully put pressure on his leg again.

The crash did not only cause him physical harm, it was also a significant financial and mental setback.

“I didn’t work for about a year and a half… My little savings that I had, that saving was going to buy a car. I was going to sell the bike and make up the money and buy a car, but just as my plan was being made, something bad happen, so I had to use my savings now, I had to live on my savings, I had to pay my bills off my savings, eat food off my savings, go to hospital, charter vehicles, all of that,” Palmer shared.

Rean Palmer’s broken leg in a cast after he was hit from his motorcycle on June 14, 2022 at the Maxfield and Chisholm avenues intersection in St Andrew.

“It affects me like 50 per cent now. Most time I still think about it and pree my loss, everything mi lose, because I still haven’t gained anything out of the accident up to today. I’ve been to lawyers and they said the insurance company not replying to them and they cannot get through to the guy that hit me down but they are trying to send the insurance company a summons so the case can go to court… I haven’t gained anything out of it, I just lost,” he said, adding that it is now two years since the mishap.

Palmer explained that he stills feels pain in his leg.

“You have a time I’ll be walking and where the leg was broken I can feel like something pinching me or something ticking in the side, tick, tick, tick, like something is ticking on the bone, so yeah, sometimes I have to sit down and constantly rub it to make that little pain go out of it… One section break near to the ankle and the other section break in the middle of the foot,” he said.

“The middle of the foot was badly broken because the bone almost shattered… piece of the bone did break out, that’s why they told me I had to put in the iron, but eventually it healed, but the spot is tender, the slightest thing touch it, it scratch off. It really tender, so I have to be really careful with it. The break by the ankle is where I feel most of my pain now,” Palmer said.

Since the crash, he has been paranoid about riding his motorcycle.

“I have been on a bike, but I don’t ride go far. In a way, with the accident, it made me feel like I don’t want to ride the bike anymore on the street because it’s like people who are travelling in cars, they’re not looking out for bikers,” he said.

“I have my bike same way, my bike is licensed. I can ride to work and I don’t. I take taxi every day to work. Over a year and odd now I’ve been just taking taxi to work. It cost me more, but I don’t want to go back to hospital. Anytime I ride in traffic, it makes me feel a way, like I don’t want to break another foot or hand. You know how much broken bones I have? I have like eight broken bones now,” Palmer said, adding that he was once robbed of a motorcycle and the robbers broke both his hands, his leg, and almost killed him.

Now, Palmer is urging road users to be more vigilant and look out for bikers.

“Be more careful, be more vigilant on the road! I would like the car users to look out for bikers because most time they’re not using their mirrors, they just making turns, making a sudden turn and you might be there and be hit. The bikers should be more careful as well, in-between traffic and such, they should be more observant. All road users must be more vigilant on the road because it is rough, being in hospital, it is not nice. I went to hospital and a lot of people there bruk up because of accidents and it is not a nice sight, and I know a lot of people would prefer not to be there…Be as careful as you can,” Palmer said.

Another crash victim, Novia Wilson, made a similar appeal to road users.

“Be aware. Be a defensive driver. Remember that you’re not only driving for yourself but you’re driving for others. You’re driving for people who, regardless of the fact that you tell them, ‘Don’t drink and drive,’ they still do…So always be alert… Every time you go out, pray, say a word to God because you never know, it might be your last. You don’t go out there and plan to be in an accident but things just happen,” said Wilson who had a near-death experience in a 2012 car crash in May Pen, Clarendon.

Recalling the night, Wilson said that she and her boyfriend were coming from Chilling on the Farm on June 24, 2012, when a car forced them off the road and into a utility post.

Novia Wilson, who was injured in a car crash in 2012, says she had anxiety and panic attacks often after the mishap. She also says that now, if she walks too much, she tends to limp on her left leg, the one that was injured.

She said that at the time of the impact she was asleep. She remembers hearing what sounded like a drum.

“So I’m like: Why is it that I am hearing a drum? But it was really the car [when it hit the utility post],” Wilson said, explaining that the driver of the car that hit the one she was in had swerved to avoid a collision with another vehicle.

“The next thing I opened my eyes and then I could hear somebody saying, ‘Blood in her eyes, blood in her eyes’, and I was like, ‘What are they talking about?’ But I did not realise that I was in an accident. It was when I felt this excruciating pain, pain took over my entire body, and then I realised that I was in an accident. I tried to get up, but my left leg was not responding,” she said.

Wilson, who became unconscious after the crash and had to be revived on the way to the hospital, suffered a complete break of her left femur.

“I could hear everything around me and everyone. I could hear my boyfriend at the time, like, ‘Novi, Novi please. Nuh dead, nuh dead.’ I could hear him screaming, crying for help,” she said.

“So I stayed in Mandeville hospital, that’s where I ended up doing my surgery. I had to get pins and rods. Currently, I’m living with a rod which runs from my hip to my knee with nails and screws because they had to use that to keep the bone in place. So I healed with that. It’s titanium, I don’t have any issues with it,” she shared.

She added that she went into surgery for eight hours while her then partner, who suffered a fractured femoral socket, was placed on bed rest for three weeks.

Wilson said it took her up to a year to learn to walk again without crutches. This was after physiotherapy sessions and follow-up doctor appointments.

Despite the challenges, she said she is most grateful to be alive and have all her limbs, something not many crash victims can claim.

But it does not come without its issues.

“If I walk too much, I tend to limp on my left leg — the injured leg — so I walk very gingerly because of it. But apart from that, I don’t have any problems,” she said.

“I had anxiety and panic attacks often after the accident. I don’t like to be a passenger anymore,” she admitted. “I want to be the one that is in control, because I think if I am the one who is in control I’ll be a defensive driver and I’ll be very much alert. My life is in my hands so I will be a lot more careful.”

This road collision occured in St Thomas in May this year.