MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Saturday’s tragic death of a 62-year-old woman in a motor vehicle crash has reignited concerns about the Spur Tree main road
which links St Elizabeth and western Jamaica with Mandeville and points east including Jamaica’s capital Kingston.
Police and locals say that Paulette Mullings of a Greater Portmore, St Catherine address was motoring up Spur Tree Hill at about 2:10pm when the driver of a truck travelling in the opposite direction lost control of his vehicle.
A concrete mixer attached to the truck rolled on to Mullings’s car. She was eventually pronounced dead at hospital after an exercise lasting several hours to remove her from the crushed car.
The accident caused a backup of traffic with motorists forced to use difficult and torturous alternative routes through south Manchester as well as northerly routes through St Elizabeth and Manchester.
Accidents such as this occur from time to time on the steep, winding Spur Tree with drivers of large, heavily laden trucks being especially prone to losing control.
Police have complained that too many truck drivers ignore signs at the top of the hill to “change down” to low gear in order to retain greater control.
Plans in recent years for a multi-lane highway linking Williamsfield in Manchester to Montego Bay (through northern Manchester, St Elizabeth and St James), which would bypass Spur Tree, has apparently been put on hold.
