Dear Sir,

I would like to bring attention to an incident that took place on the morning of September 21 in the hope that far greater caution is exercised by a member of Bermuda’s trucking community.

As I walked into Hamilton on my way to work on the East Broadway sidewalk, I was smacked in the lower back of the head by a thick branch sticking out of the side of a moving truck. Only moments later, a woman taller than I was walking in the opposite direction and was lucky enough to duck and miss the same branch. Had she not seen it, she would have been hit in the throat and possibly knocked into traffic.

It is only by great fortune that this event took place during rush hour, and consequently the truck was not moving at regular speed. Also, thankfully, the stick was pointing perpendicular to the sidewalk. Had it been facing in the same direction that the truck was moving, I could have been impaled in the back of the neck — even when moving at slow speeds. The taller pedestrian walking in the other direction might have been stabbed in the face.

To point out the obvious, this could have been a freak, fatal accident. It could have been easily prevented had the trucker merely considered the kind of damage that could be done to a person or another vehicle on our tight roads.

Hopefully, nothing like this ever takes place.

BRYANT TREW

Sandys