Shir­van Williams

"Reck­less dri­vers, your days are num­bered." This was the stern warn­ing sent out yes­ter­day by Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj. He was speak­ing at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion's (PTSC) Dri­ve Train­ing Sim­u­la­tor Acad­e­my (DT­SA), at the com­pound of the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (VM­COTT), Beetham Gar­dens. Ma­haraj said it had on­ly been about eight days since he plead­ed with dri­vers to be more cau­tious on the road.

The min­is­ter was re­fer­ring to Sun­day's trag­ic ac­ci­dent in Trinci­ty. The ac­ci­dent claimed the lives of four young peo­ple af­ter the car in which they were oc­cu­pants crossed the me­di­an on the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, Trinci­ty, and crashed in­to the Pra­do car­ry­ing Ap­peal Court judge Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo, who re­mained ward­ed in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the Mt Hope Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

Kan­ga­loo, who was act­ing CJ at the time, was on his way to the Ari­ma Race Club, San­ta Rosa. Ma­haraj said sev­er­al ini­tia­tives were be­ing con­sid­ered in an ef­fort to help curb the re­cent spike in road fa­tal­i­ties. "One of the pro­pos­als be­fore the draft­ing com­mit­tee is that bar own­ers who sell al­co­hol in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly to per­sons who dri­ve should be held ac­count­able," he said. Ma­haraj said it was not fair that so many peo­ple were los­ing their lives on the road ow­ing to dan­ger­ous dri­ving be­cause of dri­vers who are "loaded with liquor bul­lets." There are al­so pro­pos­als to have a dri­vers' ed­u­ca­tion course in­tro­duced in­to the sec­ondary school cur­ricu­lum. "In fact the min­istry, on­ly a cou­ple of hours ago, wrote a let­ter to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion where we are ap­peal­ing to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion to con­sid­er in­tro­duc­ing, in the high schools, a dri­ver's ed­u­ca­tion course," he said.

Ma­haraj felt that would help with road fa­tal­i­ties, as more young peo­ple were dri­ving high-pow­ered ve­hi­cles. He al­so hoped that would be­come a gen­er­al re­quire­ment for every­one ap­ply­ing for a dri­ver's li­cence. "We hope if this is ac­cept­ed be­fore the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles Act comes to the Par­lia­ment at the end of the year that it would be able to mar­ry that pro­pos­al, if it is ac­cept­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, to the gen­er­al ap­pli­ca­tion of a li­cence." Ma­haraj out­lined some more pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures that his min­istry would be tak­ing to help keep the roads safe, such as se­cu­ri­ty bar­ri­ers, radar guns and se­cu­ri­ty bays to make sure dri­vers obey the speed lim­it. The DT­SA is a first step to­wards se­cur­ing roads as the sim­u­la­tor can help pre­pare dri­vers for the dan­gers they may face on the road, he said. PTSC bus dri­vers came in for high praise from the min­is­ter as he de­scribed them as some of the safest dri­vers.