Get it together, DMV
A Beaconite who took the Department of Motor Vehicles’ written driving test 18 years ago still remembers the soul-draining experience. The multiple-choice questions ranged from confusing to bizarre to downright unintelligible. Though he doesn’t recall how many times he had to repeat the test, he knows it was an absurd exercise that tested not his understanding of road rules but his ability to second-guess whatever the test-writer must have been thinking (if anything). Eighteen years later, he helped a friend study for the test this week, and he was disheartened to learn that nothing has changed. The test is still every bit as unintelligible as it was nearly 20 years ago. In fact, he suspects it is the same test. This is particularly disappointing because of the ease with which the DMV could draft a new test. In the digital age, after all, this task should take only a few hours: Simply cut and paste a driving test from another jurisdiction with similar road rules and then tweak it for use in the Virgin Islands. Or just ask ChatGPT (and, of course, edit carefully). The DMV must do better.
Careless instructors
A Beaconite continues to be terrified for anyone enrolled in driving lessons in the Virgin Islands. For the most part, the little cars with “learner” stickers bumbling around Road Town are hardly a bother. That is, until driving instructors have their students park about 50 metres above the base of Joes Hill Road facing in the wrong direction. In an era when the road going up Joes Hill strangles traffic to nearly a single lane, the instructors put motorists in serious danger when they instruct their students to stop where the asphalt gives way to concrete. This area is also where two men were killed in January when a sewage truck’s brakes gave up while descending the hill. The driving instructors must have forgotten this tragedy. How else, the reporter surmises, could they knowingly put their own bodies in the pathway of multi-ton trucks trying to make it back into Road Town? What happens when another truck’s brakes give out? When considering community safety, authorities should be mindful of Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. A moratorium should be placed on driving instruction at the base of Joes Hill. Instead, instructors should find an isolated road. They have plenty of options.
Open and closed
The “closed season” is the wrong term for the lazy summer months that open up the Virgin Islands in ways difficult to imagine in the hectic times of the tourist surge. Yes, a Beaconite might miss the warm embrace of a favoured bar or restaurant that has shuttered down to weather the dearth of visitors, but there is now so much more space to explore the natural riches that are always within reach but too often overlooked — even if you are not able to squeeze in a Pain Killer cocktail or spicy rum mix along the way. Of course, the reporter loves the tourist trade and cruise ship culture that can add a sparkle of energy to the far reaches of these islands, but you really can have too much of a good thing sometimes. So it is nice to wander breezily along a beautiful and mostly empty beach. And yes, the territory needs salty sailors and holidaymakers back come November for the dollars they bring and the jobs they support, but these fleeting weeks of relaxation are worth cherishing as the territory awaits the deluge ahead. September may be the “dangerous” month hurricane-wise, but it can also be the most tranquil as residents soak in the beauty that lies all around them.