Wes­ley Gib­bings

Last week's sud­den and ap­par­ent­ly dev­as­tat­ing re­al­i­sa­tion that our high­ways and by­ways are gov­erned by traf­fic laws be­trays long­stand­ing de­nial of the fact that the most sig­nif­i­cant crim­i­nal hotspots in T&T have in­deed been the na­tion's roads.

Based on a 2013 trans­port min­istry es­ti­mate, up to 35,000 road ac­ci­dents oc­cur here on an an­nu­al ba­sis. The largest block of the more se­ri­ous ones is typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­terised by speed and/or sub­stance abuse of one kind or the oth­er, usu­al­ly the con­sump­tion of al­co­hol.

But, so shocked have some dri­vers been about this sud­den, ap­par­ent­ly un­known piece of leg­is­la­tion, the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act, a few of them have re­port­ed­ly formed a new pres­sure group to work to­ward the re­form of the Act and as­so­ci­at­ed laws and reg­u­la­tions. They have de­scribed the use by po­lice of new speed de­tec­tion de­vices as an act of of­fi­cial "high­way rob­bery" at $1,000 a pop–de­gree of trans­gres­sion notwith­stand­ing.

It is my un­der­stand­ing that the group plans on call­ing it­self the Trinidad Is­land­wide In­dig­nant Dri­vers As­so­ci­a­tion (TI­I­DA) and com­pris­es a wide cross-sec­tion of the car-own­ing com­mu­ni­ty in­clud­ing doc­tors, en­gi­neers, teach­ers, po­lice of­fi­cers, jour­nal­ists and truck and maxi taxi dri­vers all cry­ing foul over the move to sud­den­ly im­pose what they have termed "op­pres­sive," al­beit old, speed lim­its.

So it is that TI­I­DA has put for­ward the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for con­sid­er­a­tion by its mem­ber­ship. Ac­cord­ing to as­so­ci­a­tion spokesman, D Wet­mann, an on­line pe­ti­tion will be launched soon, call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to do the fol­low­ing:

1. Im­pose a max­i­mum speed lim­it of 200 kph and be­come the first coun­try in the world to do so. This would put us in the Guin­ness Book of World Records and earn us spe­cial recog­ni­tion in the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) Glob­al Sta­tus Re­port on Road Safe­ty. This will be right up there with Car­ni­val's des­ig­na­tion as The Great­est Show on Earth, Fat­boy of Curepe's Best Dou­bles in the World and our rep­u­ta­tion as land of the World's Most Hon­est Politi­cians. Think tourism dol­lars.

2. Amend Sec­tion 71A (1) of the Act which dic­tates that "A per­son who dri­ves a mo­tor ve­hi­cle dan­ger­ous­ly on a road com­mits an of­fence," by re­plac­ing the word "dan­ger­ous­ly" with "slow­ly."

Slow-pokes dri­ving at 80 kph and be­low on the high­way are the ones who cause the most ac­ci­dents be­cause swerv­ing away from them and "los­ing con­trol" of our cars leads to se­ri­ous dam­age and de­struc­tion to util­i­ty poles, walls, oth­er cars, pas­sen­gers and pedes­tri­ans who should, in any event, go out and buy a car.

3. In­crease the blood al­co­hol lim­it un­der Sec­tion 70A (1) to cater for peo­ple who can drink a case of beer or a bot­tle of pun­cheon rum and still re­mem­ber who they vot­ed for in the last elec­tion. There should al­so be an ex­emp­tion for peo­ple who drink ex­pen­sive whisky, vod­ka or cham­pagne be­cause...don't you know how much they paid for the stuff?

What is even more fright­en­ing to all con­cerned is Sec­tion 70(B) (4) which says: "Where a per­son re­ferred to...is at a hos­pi­tal as a pa­tient, he may be re­quired by a con­sta­ble to give a spec­i­men of breath at the hos­pi­tal."Be­lieve us, a "spec­i­men of breath" af­ter beers and pun­cheon can be mur­der.

4. Amend the Lit­ter Act to per­mit the dump­ing of no more than one food box on the street pro­vid­ed it was the in­ten­tion of the throw­er to aim for (a) the drain (b) over some­one's wall or (c) the open tray of a parked pick­up truck. For two food box­es, it should have been the in­tent to throw them in some­body's yard.

5. Though this has been pro­posed be­fore, use of ve­hi­cles for "pri­vate hire" (PH) should be le­galised. This should be so not on­ly be­cause they play the best mu­sic, but their dri­vers seem to make enough mon­ey to com­pen­sate in­jured pas­sen­gers not cov­ered by what would be­come use­less in­sur­ance poli­cies in the event of an ac­ci­dent. They are al­so very com­pe­tent dri­vers who can do 120 kph on a nar­row street. Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who lob­by for this will earn them­selves free trips to and from their homes in these ve­hi­cles.

6. Re­peal Sec­tion 27 (1) which talks about ve­hi­cles "so con­struct­ed or is in such a con­di­tion as to con­sti­tute a health, safe­ty or en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ard to any per­son trav­el­ling in the ve­hi­cle or to oth­er mem­bers of the pub­lic."

This needs to be act­ed up­on quick­ly, be­cause some­day soon, some­body is go­ing to start ar­gu­ing that noise pol­lu­tion can be de­scribed as con­sti­tut­ing an "en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ard" and many of us would have to go back to the muf­fler man to re­place the im­pres­sive ex­haust pipes that con­tin­ue to at­tract scores of young women to our ve­hi­cles.

7. Re­peal Sec­tion 43A (1) which dic­tates that front seat pas­sen­gers al­ways wear seat belts. This is a par­tic­u­lar ob­struc­tion when (a) pour­ing ex­pen­sive liquor for the dri­ver (b) light­ing a spliff and (c) spin­ning around to slap noisy chil­dren in the back­seat.

8. Per­mit use of mo­bile phones, but on­ly if you aren't al­ready eat­ing a bowl of hot soup or a chick­en roti (with bones) or look­ing at mu­sic videos on your dash­board DVD play­er.

These rad­i­cal re­forms are cer­tain to make life eas­i­er for all con­cerned. Sup­port TI­I­DA by sign­ing its on­line pe­ti­tion to­day!