Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

A family of 5 die in a horrific car crash on an American highway.

There is no other way to look at this drama – it is sad. The Bible says “Death rules as King” (Romans 5:17).

The Caribbean Diaspora community in South Florida is now mourning this sad tragedy. We send condolences to all the surviving family and loved-ones of the Russell family, reported in this news story here:

Title: Entire family killed in crash on Florida highway
By: Alex Harris, Miami Herald Staff Reporter

After more than 12 hours in the hospital, a 10-year-old boy succumbed to his injuries, leaving an entire family dead after a horrific car wreck in North Florida on Sunday [March 19].

The Russell family, of Hollywood, was loaded into their 2016 Chrysler 200 and headed home from a trip to Georgia, according to a memorial fundraiser. They were driving south on Interstate 75 when the sedan swerved off the road and into a tractor-trailer stopped on the side of the highway.

Nathan Russell, 37; his 35-year-old wife, Lynda; his 15-year-old daughter, La’Nyah; and one of his twins, 10-year-old Natayah, were killed in the crash. The other twin, 10-year-old Nathan Russell Jr. died hours later at ShandsHospital, according to a Florida Highway Patrol report.

Relatives are raising money for five funerals on GoFundMe and mourning on social media.

Nicole Narae, who said she is Nathan Russell’s cousin, wrote on Facebook that “tomorrow is not promised to anyone.”

“This one hurts. From the Bahamas to Haiti to South Florida…our hearts are broken,” she wrote. “It’s too much for anyone who know them and their household. So unreal to me right now.”

A vigil is was planned at the family’s Coral Springs home, at 9040 Royal Palm Blvd, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday.

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VIDEO – 5 from Hollywood killed in I-75 crash near Gainesville – http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?trackingGroup=90045&siteSection=90045_pp&videoId=32152391

What is a community to do? In this case, what is the Caribbean community to do? (The father is of Bahamian descent and the mother is of Bahamian-Haitian descent).

We cannot bring back the dead, but we can console, support and remember. This is the exact experience for the Caribbean community in South Florida today; they have “come together” and covered this family with love, prayers and the necessary financial support. Advocates for the family created a GoFundMe account for crowd-sourcing to raise $50,000. The end-result: $70,020 was raised … over 4 days.

This shows the power and effectiveness of crowd-funding.

This is not the first tragedy to befall the Caribbean community; and I guarantee you this will not be the last. But notice the alternative fundraising response. Instead of a ‘Bake Sale’ or ‘Car Wash’, advocates for the family conducted a Social Media outreach and raised $70,020 on a crowd-sourcing site.

This fact right here could be a great legacy that comes from this tragic story. The embrace of Internet & Communications Technologies so as to foster the Greater Good.

This objective aligns with the movement behind the book Go Lean… Caribbean. The book and a previous blog-commentary have identified crowd-sourcing as an effective strategy for funding Caribbean projects, especially addressing the Diaspora of the Caribbean communities. These ones have been identified as a potential resources for their time, talent and treasuries. There is only the need for a good delivery system.

The Go Lean book details that delivery. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) with the charter to facilitate optimization of the region’s societal engines. Imagine not just funding the charitable causes for assuaging family tragedies – like the foregoing news article – but facilitating investment and entrepreneurship as well. Imagine the job-creation!

Early in the Go Lean book, the responsibility to attract investments (funding) and create jobs was identified as an important function for the CU with these pronouncements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 14):

xxiv.  Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxvi.  Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries… In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries … – impacting the region with more jobs.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that the Caribbean region needs unconventional thinking to overcome the obstacles – the societal defects – that befall our communities. We have an atrocious rate of human flight (reported at 70 percent of the professional classes); so many of our people have left their island homes to now live (and die) in the big-bad United States (and other countries, like Canada and Western Europe). Our citizens leave and we have to accept whatever unforeseen occurrences that befall them.

Crowd-funding is an unconventional funding method – see Appendix – there are benefits for thinking unconventionally and we need to start thinking unconventionally to impact all aspects of Caribbean society – all the engines. This is the charter for the Go Lean book, to effectuate change in the region’s societal engines, allowing for these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance/administration/oversight to support these engines.

The Go Lean book/roadmap subscribes to crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing as “unconventional thinking” to attract unconventional funding for Caribbean philanthropy and empowerment causes (think entrepreneurial endeavors):

• The book advocates for cooperatives…
• The book advocates for incubators… helping/coaching entrepreneurs …
• The book advocates for the full exploration and exploitation of social media, identifying www.myCarribbean.gov  …

Beyond crowd-funding, there is another compelling lesson to glean from the sad drama in the foregoing news article. As a result of attending the “Vigil” on Friday (March 24), it was disclosed that the cause of the car crash was due to driver fatigue or human error: the father – Nathan Russell – fell asleep behind the wheel.

So now we see that this tragedy was also preventable.

Many automakers have now committed to providing technical solutions to transcend human error; they have introduced Self-Driving cars (fully autonomous) and have rolled-out Driver-Assist features, such as lane violation detection. These advancements would have been life-saving for this family of 5. Consider this list of features that help drivers avoid or mitigate collisions:

Title: Cars With Advanced Safety Systems

Key active safety systems include:

• Automatic emergency braking (AEB) – Brakes are automatically applied to prevent a collision or reduce collision speed.
• Forward-collision warning (FCW) – Visual and/or audible warning intended alert the driver and prevent a collision.
• Blind-spot warning (BSW) – Visual and/or audible notification of vehicle in blind spot. The system may provide an additional warning if you use your turn signal when there is a car next to you in another lane.
• Rear cross-traffic warning – Visual, audible, or haptic notification of object or vehicle out of rear camera range, but could be moving into it.
• Rear Automatic Emergency Braking (Rear AEB) – Brakes are automatically applied to prevent backing into something behind the vehicle. This could be triggered by the rear cross-traffic system, or other sensors on the vehicle.
• Lane-departure warning (LDW) – Visual, audible, or haptic warning to alert the driver when they are crossing lane markings.
• Lane-keeping assist (LKA) – Automatic corrective steering input or braking provided by the vehicle when crossing lane markings.
• Lane Centering Assist – Continuous active steering to stay in between lanes (active steer, autosteer, etc.)
• Adaptive Cruise Control – Adaptive cruise uses lasers, radar, cameras, or a combination of these systems to keep a constant distance between you and the car ahead, automatically maintaining a safe following distance. If highway traffic slows, some systems will bring the car to a complete stop and automatically come back to speed when traffic gets going again, allowing the driver to do little more than pay attention and steer.

Source: Posted March 08, 2017; retrieved March 28, 2017 from: http://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/cars-with-advanced-safety-systems/

The proper motivation and inspiration from this car crash in the foregoing – and the lost of life of the Russell Family – should be a commitment for Research-and-Development of these and other highway safety automation initiatives, and then their deployment in the Caribbean.

This is the commitment of the Go Lean movement.

Previously, these innovations were detailed as being impactful to this roadmap to elevate the Caribbean. See this sample list of previous blog-commentaries that delved into the details and the resultant issues:

Martyrs

No one wanted to lose a family like this. This is just an unforeseen occurrence that proves that “bad things happen to good people”; (this point coincides with the Bible’s edict at Ecclesiastes 9:11) But can we use this tragedy as inspiration to power the Caribbean community for progress.

Indeed we can!

The Go Lean book asserts that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” (Page 8).

We can memorialize this family, and their tragedy, as stimuli to double-down on the Research-and-Development community ethos, to innovate collision avoidance systems as described above. The Go Lean book defines community ethos as …

… “the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period”.

The book proceeds to identify a number of community ethos (and related strategies) that the Caribbean region needs to adopt. Consider this sample list:

• Impact Research & Development (Page 30)
• Promote Intellectual Property (Page 29)
• Bridge the Digital Divide (Page 31)
• Impact Social Media ((Page 111)
• Foster Technology (Page 197)
• Improve Transportation (Page 205)
• Develop a Caribbean Auto Industry (Page 206)

The Russell Family can be “martyrs” for progress … and innovation!

Rest in Peace Nathan, Lynda, La’Nyah, Natayah, and Nathan Jr.. You will not be forgotten!

🙁

Download the free e-Book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix – Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and of alternative finance. In 2015, it was estimated that worldwide over US$34 billion was raised this way.^[1][2]

Although the concept can also be executed through mail-order subscriptions, benefit events, and other methods, it is now often performed via Internet-mediated registries.^[3] This modern crowdfunding model is generally based on three types of actors: the project initiator who proposes the idea and/or project to be funded, individuals or groups who support the idea, and a moderating organization (the “platform”) that brings the parties together to launch the idea.^[4]

Crowdfunding has been used to fund a wide range for-profit entrepreneurial ventures such as artistic and creative projects, medical expenses, travel, or community-oriented social entrepreneurship projects.^[5]
Source: Retrieved March 28, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding