Pao­lo Ker­na­han

The re­ac­tion to the sto­ries is by now pre­pro­grammed. "Act­ing Chief Jus­tice in crit­i­cal con­di­tion and four oth­ers killed af­ter an ear­ly morn­ing col­li­sion." Im­me­di­ate­ly civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ment agen­cies is­sue the same bor­ing lament that seems de­rived from a tem­plate: "...is ad­vis­ing cit­i­zens to be care­ful on the na­tion's roads."

This sort of weak state­ment has the tenor of a peo­ple al­most re­signed to grue­some road fa­tal­i­ties as an in­evitabil­i­ty of life in Tri­ni-dad. Each crash is more hor­rif­ic than the next yet we are un­moved. "Ah nex one get kill yes!" This non­cha­lance mir­rors our at­ti­tude to­wards the steadi­ly ris­ing mur­der toll. "How much it is dey kill to­day, two?" Ho hum, we'll just drink a bot­tle of rum and shuf­fle on with our lives hop­ing that in this death deal­ing lot­tery that is Trinidad, our num­ber does not come up next.

It was more than just fate which brought then act­ing Chief Jus­tice Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo in­to con­tact with four young peo­ple head­ing home from a night­club in Ari­ma. The scene of the ac­ci­dent had the ap­pear­ance of a space shut­tle crash. One of the ve­hi­cles dis­in­te­grat­ed on im­pact, there were re­ports of body parts scat­tered across the road.

All four oc­cu­pants of the Hon­da Civic which col­lid­ed with the Chief Jus­tice and his se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel were killed and we are left to ar­rive at our own con­clu­sions about what hap­pened. It isn't dif­fi­cult though, as the tra­jec­to­ry of these tragedies is usu­al­ly the same.

The av­er­age law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, al­beit a mere frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion, must live in fear of be­ing killed while dri­ving be­cause we have been ut­ter­ly aban­doned by the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment. In the wake of this lat­est ac­ci­dent, gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were heard to say, "Peo­ple have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their own ac­tions on the na­tion's roads." This is of course bull be­cause if hu­man be­ings could be re­lied up­on to do the right and law­ful thing in all cir­cum­stances, we would have no need of laws, a po­lice ser­vice or stand­ing armies for that mat­ter.

What is al­so dis­ap­point­ing are calls from mem­bers of the pub­lic to con­struct more guard rails and oth­er crash tech­nol­o­gy to safe­guard road users; use­ful, but cer­tain­ly not the an­swer. Sev­er­al years ago I at­tend­ed the in­stal­la­tion of the first mod­ern crash bar­ri­er sys­tem in the coun­try.

It was com­prised of sev­er­al large plas­tic wa­ter-filled cells de­signed to ab­sorb the en­er­gy of an im­pact. The sys­tem was placed on the high­way in the vicin­i­ty of the Ari­ma race­track and cost the gov­ern­ment $350,000, a mod­est fee re­al­ly.

With­in a week a mo­torist crashed in­to it, the wa­ter cells per­formed their job spec­tac­u­lar­ly. Each one col­lapsed as it was de­signed to and the oc­cu­pant was able to dri­ve off with­out fil­ing a re­port. Need­less to say, that crash tech­nol­o­gy was nev­er re­placed. I used that ex­am­ple to dri­ve home the point: you build it and Tri­nis will crash in­to it.

The prob­lem is so ob­vi­ous that it bores me hav­ing to re­peat it. No po­lice on the road, no law. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs and Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jack Ewat-ski have tried and failed to change the cul­ture of the Po­lice Ser­vice. The Gov­ern­ment in­tro­duced a law ef­fec­tive­ly ban­ning the use of cell phones while dri­ving yet how many peo­ple have been charged with this of­fence? Any­where on the road mo­bile phone users can be seen car­ry­ing on lengthy con­ver­sa­tions while chang­ing lanes, com­ing out of side streets ig­nor­ing all oth­er dri­vers and back­ing out on­to ma­jor roads.

When the breathal­yser was fi­nal­ly in­tro­duced, law en­force­ment took this very se­ri­ous­ly. Hun­dreds were ar­rest­ed and charged with drunk dri­ving. One mag­is­trate was heard to say, "But like dis ting eh wukkin," so nu­mer­ous were the re­peat of­fend­ers.

Then, as is our way, the an­ti-drunk dri­ving jug­ger­naut died down. Why on earth aren't there more breathal­yser traps at Mara­cas Beach, Cau­ra Riv­er, Lopinot, at the night­clubs? Why aren't more mo­torists be­ing screened for in­tox­i­cants be­fore they get on the road to kill peo­ple? Why? Too much work.

Apart from coun­tries like Italy and In­dia, Trinida­di­an mo­torists are among the worst in the world. If you are dri­ving on the Solomon Ho­choy High­way in the right lane at the speed lim­it of 80 kilo­me­tres an hour, you can be guar­an­teed that some­one will race up to your ve­hi­cle with flash­ing lights.

If you fail to change lanes that dri­ver will over­take and then cut in front of you to demon­strate his dis­dain. This has hap­pened to me on many oc­ca­sions; one dri­ver of a pick­up truck ac­tu­al­ly swerved in front of me and abrupt­ly pressed on his brakes.

For the mo­torists out there who would kill the rest of us, the on­ly so­lu­tion is the reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion of the law. These be­hav­iours will on­ly ever change with reg­u­lar pa­trols and pros­e­cu­tion of er­rant dri­vers. This is the same bor­ing old sto­ry like­ly to be re­peat­ed as we ap­proach our fifti­eth an­niver­sary as whol­ly un­civilised so­ci­ety.