In T&T in re­cent years, there have been sev­er­al ini­tia­tives and cam­paigns, even new laws im­ple­ment­ed, all aimed at road safe­ty.A few Car­ni­val sea­sons ago, for ex­am­ple, when all-in­clu­sives, cool­er fetes and shows were in full flight, the NGO Ar­rive Alive set up "sober zones" at sev­er­al events, of­fer­ing fete and show pa­trons a place to re­lax and sober up. Peo­ple who made use of the fa­cil­i­ties were spo­ken to about the need for a des­ig­nat­ed–sober–dri­ver, safe dri­ving and buck­ling up. In De­cem­ber 2009, laws and equip­ment were in­tro­duced that al­low po­lice to sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly test dri­vers for so­bri­ety. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly since then, the po­lice have mount­ed ex­er­cis­es with the breatha­ly­ers and some dri­vers have been caught and con­vict­ed of drunk dri­ving.

Even be­fore that, laws were im­ple­ment­ed mak­ing seat­belts manda­to­ry for dri­vers and front-seat pas­sen­gers and ban­ning use of cell phones while dri­ving. Traf­fic war­dens have been in­tro­duced to sup­port the po­lice in en­force­ment of the laws.The lat­est is what the Min­istry of Trans­port de­scribes as its "ag­gres­sive and head-on ap­proach," launched in March in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al stake­hold­ers– a na­tion­al road safe­ty aware­ness cam­paign.On pa­per, these ini­tia­tives, added to the traf­fic laws al­ready in place, should have yield­ed some pos­i­tive re­sults by now.

But the tragedy of this past week­end shows that the op­po­site is true, so in­stead the na­tion wakes up Sun­day morn­ing to the news of four young peo­ple killed in two car ac­ci­dents, their deaths bring­ing the num­ber of road fa­tal­i­ties for the year to 78.

The fact is that war­dens, breathal­y­sers, and stiffer traf­fic penal­ties are not mak­ing much of a dif­fer­ence be­cause there is a woe­ful lack of im­ple­men­ta­tion and en­force­ment on the roads. Dri­vers in­dulge in reck­less, dan­ger­ous be­hav­iour to their heart's con­tent be­cause there is next to no chance they will be caught and con­vict­ed.There are very few po­lice traf­fic pa­trols, so er­rant dri­vers reg­u­lar­ly breach traf­fic lights and speed lim­its, over­take reck­less­ly and com­mit the most dan­ger­ous traf­fic vi­o­la­tions, putting many lives at risk. Dai­ly fla­grant acts of reck­less en­dan­ger­ment take place in clear view of dri­vers, pas­sen­gers and pedes­tri­ans–but un­de­tect­ed by law en­force­ment.As a re­sult, too of­ten there are sce­nar­ios like Sun­day's in which mul­ti­ple lives are lost be­cause ba­sic, pre­ven­ta­tive in­ter­ven­tions do not take place.

There re­al­ly is no need for an­oth­er re­ac­tionary mea­sure, like the plan by the po­lice ser­vice to start tar­get­ing young dri­vers. That ac­tion is sim­ply a re­ac­tion to the fact that the lat­est fa­tal­i­ties were all teenagers, rather than as a re­sult of sol­id, sci­en­tif­ic da­ta to show that young dri­vers cause the most ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents.In­stead, the po­lice need to be con­sis­tent in pa­trolling and en­forc­ing, putting out a wide net dai­ly to catch law­less dri­vers in the act and pre­vent the reck­less and ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour that is tak­ing such a heavy toll on the pop­u­la­tion. The start­ing point must be reg­u­lar and ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment, mak­ing full use of all the reg­u­la­tions and sys­tems al­ready in place. That alone will make a big dif­fer­ence.