As the community drive for road safety reform continues to rocket in Bermuda, Gorham’s has taken a lead role. The hardware store recently became the title sponsor of The Royal Gazette’sDrive for Change road safety campaign which will help us to deliver even more news, features, educational material and events in the coming months.

Since January of this year, Drive for Change has been pushing for three crucial legislative changes — the introduction of roadside sobriety breath testing, speed cameras and a graduated licensing programme for new bike riders — measures that have reduced death and injury in other jurisdictions, including ones similar to Bermuda. At the same time the campaign has helped to raise awareness of the epidemic Bermuda faces while interviewing family members and loved ones of those who we have lost to the roads as well as road crash survivors themselves.

Kirk Kitson, deputy chairman of Gorham’s board, explained: “I think the campaign is really important because the driving culture on the roads has taken a turn for the worse.“We need to change the culture. We have reached the stage where we have to address it — we cannot go on like this. Gorham’s wanted to become the lead sponsor for Drive for Change and we are excited about it.”

It is commonly agreed that Bermuda faces a road safety epidemic with one in five people on the island being admitted to the Emergency Room for treatment for road-related injuries between 2009 and 2015 and 118 dying in crashes over a ten year period. The Gorham’s management team has pledged to support the campaign in the next five months and use its customer base to help spread the road safety message.

A spokeswoman for Drive for Change said: “It’s great to see Gorham’s taking a lead role in the movement towards improving the road safety standards in Bermuda. We have achieved a great deal since we launched three months ago — Gorham’s support will help us to go further. It will help the campaign to reach its full potential and ultimately help to save lives.”

Mr Kitson added: “We are having a little change in philosophy here — Gorham’s has a fairly low profile in the community from the point of view of endorsing programmes like this that we think are very important for the island. We would like to become more involved in helping the community.

“We need to change the driving culture. We have reached the stage where we have to address it — we cannot go on like this.”

Mr Kitson, backed by senior manager Rod Farrington, said the company could help Drive for Change to tap into the community. He added: “We have a very broad spectrum of shoppers here — we are really representative of Bermuda from a cultural and ethnic point of view. We see ourselves as non-political, we simply want to help our own customers.”

Mr Farrington said the campaign had helped to revive his commitment to better road safety.

He added: “The one thing I think this campaign has brought to my mind is that I have been complacent. You see something for so long that I guess you just accept it and don’t think much about it. “This campaign has made me start to think about it again – particularly where I see that for every death there are 200 people injured and these people are having to live with it. How does it change their lives? It is often just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Mr Farrington said two of his sons had been involved in crashes. He added: “As a parent, it scares you to death. Those memories have all come back.”

The Drive for Change road safety objectives are shared with campaign partners A Piece of the Rock and backed by police, doctors and EMTs, anti-alcohol abuse charity CADA, the Bermuda Road Safety Council and safe riding school B/Moto.

Mr Kitson said that while our road traffic incident figures were unacceptable the Drive for Change campaign was helping to change behaviour on the roads. He added: “One thing I have taken away from it is I think it’s working. I drive every day at about 7.30 in the morning and I think that there is evidence of change on the roads.”

This article was originally published in the 2018 edition of the RG Cup Match supplement.

The post Gorham’s takes the wheel on road safety appeared first on RG Magazines.

From painting indoors and out, to fixing those faulty shelves, and repurposing the side table that looks out of place anywhere but in the shed, the next few weeks are perfect for completing jobs you can never bring yourself to do when the weather is nice outside.

So, with that in mind, rgmags paid a visit to Gorham’s to ask some of their experts what tasks they get asked about most. From the keen amateur, to the DIY professional, here’s a list of things you might fancy having a go at.

Painting

Hardly an original concept, but you’d still be surprised how many people come to see Greg Nisbett, Gorham’s floor manager and paint specialist, on a daily basis. Gorham’s called it the “single biggest project of the fall and winter months on the island”.

“I get people almost every day who say ‘I want to paint my house but I’ve never done it before,” Greg said.

The other big request Greg gets is for help with paint colours from people who want the same look, but don’t know what the exact shade they want is. The retailer’s paint spectrometre helps in that regard.

“We make our own paint, I can mix the right shade in about four or five minutes right in the store,” Greg said.

Top tip: According to Greg the best thing you can do is prepare your wall properly before you paint it. To do that, he suggests a quick treatment with Jomax, a mold killer, before using some Start Right stain-blocking primer and sealer. After that the finish coat is up to you.

Flooring

Not something that immediately comes to mind when you think DIY, laying a floor is not normally a simple task. However, Blake Simons, who is the Building Materials Manager for Gorham’s, believes it is a task that can become relatively simple with just the right approach.

“It’s very realistic for people to be able to do it themselves,” Blake said. “A lot of people come in, they ask us for advice on how to do it, and we tell them.

“It’s project lots of people might think they can’t do, but they can do.”

It helps that a new product from Aqua Vision, who have designed a waterproof laminate faux wood flooring, comes with instructions on the packet.

A floating floor, it does not need to be glued down, and snaps into place seamlessly.

Top tip: When laying flooring start at the left side of the room and put the grain with the light that’s coming in from the window.

Lighting

One definitely for the more proficient handy man, the desire to bring natural light into homes has always driven the amateur Do it Yourselfer.

While putting in a window is not always easy, the new Solatube Daylighting System is supposedly a task that can be completed relatively quickly – as long as you’re comfortable knocking holes in your roof and ceiling.

“Believe it or not it is a do it yourself project, or it can be done by a contractor, but what’s fantastic about this product is that it allows you to add light to any room without electricity,” said Tyrone Sampson of Aurora Enterprises.

Top tip: While it is a “quite simple installation project” Tyrone said it is essential to get the outside correct. Making a mistake between the roof and ceiling is “not a problem” but you don’t want to get the roof wrong.

For more tips and tricks on doing it yourself, visit www.gorhams-ltd.com

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