Clevon Raphael

While we are nat­u­ral­ly fo­cused on the dicey every­day busi­ness of en­sur­ing our per­son­al safe­ty and that of our fam­i­lies in the face of the vi­cious on­slaught by the gun-tot­ing ban­dits, an­oth­er mal­a­dy is threat­en­ing to as­sume epic pro­por­tions if the au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue to pay lip ser­vice to road safe­ty.

The dis­cern­ing among us would re­alise that I am re­fer­ring to the scan­dalous if not heart-rend­ing sce­nario with re­spect to the in­creas­ing num­ber of road fa­tal­i­ties, which has so far claimed 44 vic­tims up to Mon­day of this week. Five young men were dis­patched to the here­after in three sep­a­rate col­li­sions be­tween Fri­day and Sun­day, as the car­nage rages un­abat­ed.

While we all have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our ac­tions, the fact re­mains that more needs to be done by the au­thor­i­ties to ar­rest this wan­ton loss of lives on the high­ways and by­ways. One can­not de­ny that the spate of col­li­sions is an­oth­er glar­ing ex­am­ple of the in­dis­ci­pline that per­vades every stra­tum of our so­ci­ety and, as I have re­peat­ed­ly said, this alarm­ing high lev­el of in­dis­ci­pline -from top to bot­tom-is the gen­e­sis of our so­cial and oth­er mal­adies.

Ac­cord­ing to a pub­lished re­port in 2007, T&T to­talled 208 road deaths, or 19.9 road deaths per 100,000 peo­ple in the pop­u­la­tion. "This rate of road fa­tal­i­ties in the pop­u­la­tion is on par with the world­wide rate but is still sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than coun­tries such as Ire­land, with a rate of 8.2 deaths per 100,000, and the Unit­ed King­dom, which has a rate of 4.9 per 100,000.

"By the mid­dle of De­cem­ber 2008, the to­tal num­ber of road deaths in Trinidad and To­ba­go had sur­passed the 2007 to­tal and stood at 226." The Unit­ed Na­tions has stat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.3 mil­lion deaths oc­cur year­ly on the world's roads, with the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion es­ti­mat­ing the an­nu­al world­wide eco­nom­ic costs of road-traf­fic crash­es at US$518 bil­lion.

Wouldn't it be in­ter­est­ing to as­cer­tain what our fig­ure is in this re­gard? It was al­so re­port­ed that in sweet T&T, among the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to road fa­tal­i­ties were the lack of seat-belt use, drink­ing and dri­ving and fail­ure to ob­serve ba­sic safe­ty rules. And on Mon­day last, di­rec­tor of Ar­rive Alive, Brent Bat­son, dis­closed that young males be­tween the ages of 15-24 con­tin­ue to be the largest group of peo­ple los­ing their lives through road col­li­sions.

One of the things that need to hap­pen is the reg­u­lar pres­ence of traf­fic cops on the roads, and not on­ly on week­ends when of course the drunk dri­vers are more prone to be reck­less and down­right care­less. It is no se­cret that a vis­i­ble po­lice pres­ence is a strong de­ter­rent and in spite of what peo­ple may say Tri­nis are not in­her­ent­ly law­less; we are en­cour­aged to be that way be­cause in the ab­sence of mech­a­nisms to make us ac­count­able for break­ing the laws, traf­fic and oth­er­wise; rav­ing mad road hogs would con­tin­ue to dis­play the worst mo­tor­ing habits pos­si­ble which in­vari­ably end in some in­no­cent mo­torists, pas­sen­gers or pedes­tri­ans, los­ing their lives.

Last year I asked a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer at the Traf­fic Branch why it was so dif­fi­cult to see reg­u­lar mo­bile pa­trols on the roads and his re­sponse was swift and di­rect-the lack of man­pow­er. But while the TTPS is seek­ing to strength­en its es­tab­lish­ment, there are some things that can be done which would bring some san­i­ty to our reck­less and care­less dri­vers, one of them be­ing the long moot­ed in­tro­duc­tion of the points sys­tem.

Do you think if there was such a sys­tem in place that those so-in­clined mo­torists would be dri­ving like crazy all over the place? When they know that they could per­ma­nent­ly lose their li­cences for lengthy pe­ri­ods af­ter chalk­ing up a cer­tain num­ber of points? Ar­rive Alive must be com­pli­ment­ed for do­ing its part and one must al­so give cred­it for the im­ple­ment­ing of the breathal­yser sys­tem. I am sure the fines col­lect­ed so far must have swelled the Trea­sury since its in­tro­duc­tion.

As stat­ed ear­li­er, this lack of dis­ci­pline which per­me­ates the en­tire so­ci­ety is be­ing trag­i­cal­ly man­i­fest­ed in the reck­less man­ner these ir­re­spon­si­ble mo­torists op­er­ate their ma­chines, turn­ing the ve­hi­cles in­to lethal weapons. Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj must move very quick­ly to im­ple­ment this bad­ly need­ed points sys­tem as an­oth­er means of com­ing to grips with this whol­ly un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion.

Dis­ci­pline on the roads, Sen­a­tor Ma­haraj, must be made one of the high­est pri­or­i­ties of this gov­ern­ment, which came in­to of­fice with the promise of con­struc­tive changes in the so­ci­ety.