Man killed in car smash
(CNS): A 39-year-old man was killed in the early hours of Friday morning after the car he was driving smashed into a tree. Police confirmed this morning (23 December) that at about 1:52am Richard Alutaya Rivera of East End, who was driving a Honda Civic on Shamrock Road in the direction of his home, appeared to lose control of his vehicle, which skidded off the road and collided with a tree. Emergency services attended the scene, including the Fire Department, medics and police, as the man was trapped in the car. Once freed, the man was taken to George Town hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 3:10am.
The RCIPS Traffic Management issued an advisory that commuters may be delayed until around 7:30am as the police continue investigations into the cause of the fatal crash.
The man is the seventh person to die on the roads in Cayman this year and comes just three weeks after a fatal crash on Esterley Tibbets Highway.
Anyone with information in relation to the accident may contact the Traffic Management at 946-6254.
Category: Local News
idk why so many people are arguing, when somebofdy has died….
Because too many people are dying on Cayman's roads because selfish idiots drive too fast.
Maybe I missed the part of the article that said the man was speeding. Seems like a lot of the posters have already made this assumption.
Are you aware that a person can be driving 30mph and skid out of control? I witness it myself with someone going around a roundabout just the other day.
Is it possible that because it was 2am in the morning he nodded off to sleep and who knows perhaps his foot then hit the accelerator.
I suggest you all refrain from making these bold assumptions until facts are known.
Whenpeople hear accident, early hours, people immediately jump to the conclusion of drunk driving, reckless driving, speeding etcetera.
30 mph and lost control on a roundabout??? Man….. those roundabouts are dangerous!!!
Idiot! Ever heard of skidding?
Sincere condolences to the family and friend of this gentleman. Another tragedy at Christmas time.
May his soul rest in peace.
So sad – R I P – GOD bless all the family and friends. Everyone try to drive safely 'the life you save may be your own'.
R.I.P Kuya Richard… still hard to believe you're gone.
Another Honda Civic driven like a race car threatening the lives of innocent road users. These boy racers need to be caught AND JAILED – it might save their lives and the lives of good innocent people.
Boy racer?
The poor guy was 39 years old.
"Boy racers?"
Did the article not say the man was 39 years old?
Where did it say he was racing?
Someone driving home in the early hours of the morning does not automatically mean they were speeding or racing.
Richard was an very thorough craftsman. He will always be remembered by the BT Heritage group. Condolences to his family.
What is the speed limit in the area of the accident?
40 mph.
IF YOU DRIVE SAFELY
If you drive safely and not under the influence, it does not matter what year or brand of car you are driving.There is no need to ban any year of car on the road as it is not the cars' fault if you have an accident and kill yourself. In Cuba the people are driving vehicles from the 60's and 70's so you see it does not mater what year the vehicle was made in.
Rest in peace, chard…
Dear Bueller,
Spoken like a true uneducated moron speaking with ‘authority’ on a topic of which one neither has any knowledge or understanding.
Better if you had first read the Fable of the ‘Jackass in the Lion’s skin’.
Yo Mouse, why so bitter? It's the christmas….. have a cookie.
Yet another Honda involved in a fatal accident – it seems like almost every one involves a Honda. This is certainly no coincidence, and is surely the result of a lack of safety features (air bags, crumple zones etc) in old Japanese vehicles. How many more people need to die before the Government acts? I for one would completely ban the import of any more pre-2000 Japanese cars, and anyone who is considering buying one really needs to think about the value of life – yes, you might pick up some cheap wheels, but is it worth risking your life every time you drive anywhere?
RIP to the man involved in this smash, and condolences to his family and friends.
You obviously dont know anything about motor vehicles…
Don't blame the make or age of the car.
If you check out the photos it was a modified (big exhaust, alloys, low profile tyres, possibly lowered) Honda and it took a massive side impact, which even a current model would have been hard pushed to survive.
It's not the first modified car to be involved in a fatality and the problem is that when you start messing with any factory-spec car the carefully engineered handling and braking characteristics go out of the window.
What people don't realise is how simple mods change a fairly benign car into something that will turn round and bite them on local roads. If you drop the suspension 2" all round but retain the stock shocks and hit a pothole (been there, done it) everything bottoms out and then bounces back so your car goes wherever the heck it feels like. If you swap 14" wheels with 70 profile tyres for 16"/17"/18" wheels with wide 50/45/40 profile tyres and don't change anything else you get pretty much the same result but for slightly different reasons. If you do both you create a death trap. It may look real cool but it's going to kill you sooner or later.
This isn't about pre-anything cars, it's about proper vehicle inspections, realistic legislation to control modifications including mandatory independant engineering inspections on modified cars to validate insurance cover, education programmes involving people like the Cayman Islands Hot Rod Association and RCIPS doing their job by pulling clearly dangerously modified cars off the road before crashes like this happen. There's nothing wrong with modifying vehicles if you do it right but I've seen cars so low they couldn't make it round the Butterfield Roundabout because the wheels kept hitting the fenders – that's something the police can see and deal with.
My sympathies to this guy and his family because something he obviously enjoyed killed him but in his memory let's learn a few lessons and drop this BS about certain types of cars being dangerous. You might as well argue that because the car hit a tree all trees should be cut down.
"it took a massive side impact, which even a current model would have been hard pushed to survive."
That is precisely my point. You must accept that he would have had a far better chance of survival in a current model car. If you don't, have a look at this: http://www.howsafeisyourcar.com.au/Search?make=honda&model=Civic
– Civics consistently get 4 or 5 out of 5 until you scroll down to 2000 when it drops to 2!
Someone up the page referred to the classic cars in Cuba – I think you'd have a much better chance of surviving a crash in a boat of an American classic than a Japanese tin can. In fact, if any investigative journalist has a few free hours, it should be pretty easy for licencing and the police to pull up the following figures for the last 10 years or so (admittedly not a huge sample size): number of licenced vehicles, number of licenced pre-2000 Japanese cars, number of accidents, number of fatal accidents, number of accidents involving pre-2000 Japanese cars, number of fatal accidents involving pre-2000 Japanese cars. The driver demographic (younger divers) would explain a higher number of those vehicles being involved in accidents, but it definitely seems that a disproportionate number of fatal accidents involve old Japanese cars, and Hondas in particular. Here are five from a quick search of this website:
Honda Logo: http://centos6-httpd22-php56-mysql55.installer.magneticone.com/o_belozerov/31115drupal622/crime/2011/12/06/police-charge-driver-latest-fatal-road-smash
Honda Torneo: http://centos6-httpd22-php56-mysql55.installer.magneticone.com/o_belozerov/31115drupal622/headline-news/2010/01/16/crash-claims-one-mans-life
Honda Civic: http://centos6-httpd22-php56-mysql55.installer.magneticone.com/o_belozerov/31115drupal622/headline-news/2010/08/03/major-smash-claims-life
Honda Civic: http://centos6-httpd22-php56-mysql55.installer.magneticone.com/o_belozerov/31115drupal622/local-news/2011/06/01/teen-killed-car-smash
Honda Civic: http://centos6-httpd22-php56-mysql55.installer.magneticone.com/o_belozerov/31115drupal622/local-news/2011/05/01/road-death-cayman-brac
As if to prove my point, another Civic in a crash, another death: http://centos6-httpd22-php56-mysql55.installer.magneticone.com/o_belozerov/31115drupal622/local-news/2011/12/28/driver-badly-hurt-crash
And if the photos in the Compass are anything to go by, that didn't even look like a particularly bad smash.
Sooo sad!
Condolences…
Condolences to the family and friends of this young man, Spotts Raceway has claimed another victim why was the 3rd lane added to this road?
1. This is not in Spotts
2. This road had only 2 lanes
2. 39 isnt that young…
4. RIP
It didn't happen at Spotts, It was on a 2 lane stretch of road….
Rest in peace, my friend. We will surely miss you.
This is so sad – my condolences to his family.