The Gov­ern­ment plans to launch a cam­paign to sen­si­tise the pub­lic to the dan­gers of us­ing head­phones in pub­lic places, par­tic­u­lar­ly while ex­it­ing ve­hi­cles. In a me­dia re­lease, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ja­mal Mo­hammed said us­ing head­phones in pub­lic is as dan­ger­ous, or even more dan­ger­ous, than us­ing cell­phones while dri­ving.

Mo­hammed said the use of head­phones in pub­lic spaces leads to "inat­ten­tion­al blind­ness"–users are so ab­sorbed or dis­tract­ed while lis­ten­ing to mu­sic and oth­er ma­te­r­i­al they are un­aware of their sur­round­ings and what is hap­pen­ing around them. He said this can lead to per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty be­ing com­pro­mised or in­jury as users are un­able to hear traf­fic sounds.

Walk­ing while lis­ten­ing to head­phones has led to tripling in mo­tor in­ci­dents in sev­er­al coun­tries, re­sult­ing in se­vere in­juries and death. The min­is­ter said what is need­ed is for the mo­tor­ing pub­lic to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment to keep T&T's roads safe for all. Ac­cord­ing to Ar­rive Alive's web­site, there were 181 road fa­tal­i­ties for 2011, with 189 record­ed for 2012.