In the ide­al T&T, some­one with a tech­ni­cal mind will in­vent a com­put­erised mech­a­nism (to be fit­ted to all ve­hi­cles by law) which pre­vents cars from in­creas­ing speed above 50 mph. This will dras­ti­cal­ly re­duce or elim­i­nate com­plete­ly the amount of in­no­cent by­standers be­ing killed by run­away ve­hi­cles that fly off the road and slam in­to them.

Speed­ing and al­co­hol-fu­elled cars will no longer be able to flip over the me­di­an and crush un­sus­pect­ing ve­hi­cles on the oth­er side of the high­way. The on­ly ve­hi­cles legal­ly al­lowed to dri­ve with­out these de­vices would be emer­gency ve­hi­cles-am­bu­lances, fire, po­lice and army. This com­put­erised de­vice will al­so help to low­er the crime rate as crim­i­nals won't be able to make speedy get­aways.

Peo­ple will com­plain that their cars are too slow to take them to work on time. This grouse will be ad­dressed by the in­tro­duc­tion of (a) manda­to­ry class­es in time man­age­ment for em­ploy­ees of all busi­ness­es and (b) a world-class na­tion­wide pub­lic trans­port ser­vice-prefer­ably trams and trains-ac­com­pa­nied by le­gal man­dates about car pool­ing (at least three peo­ple in a car al­lowed on roads at peak hours).

Lor­ries and de­liv­ery ve­hi­cles will com­plain about slow­er speed of de­liv­ery af­fect­ing busi­ness, but less traf­fic on the roads will give them the ex­tra time they re­quire, even when dri­ving at a de­creased speed. An ad­di­tion­al trans­port al­ter­na­tive will be pro­vid­ed by clear­ly marked bike lanes or a spe­cial "bike route" (akin to the bus route, but for bikes on­ly). Af­ter a pe­ri­od of com­plain­ing and pro-test­ing, peo­ple in T&T will sur­ren­der to the in­evitable and start rid­ing bikes, re­al­is­ing that they can get around faster and more safe­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly.

Pol­lu­tion and the de­mand for gas will be dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced and we will be­gin to see a much health­i­er pop­u­la­tion, re­sult­ing in less of a strain on the health sec­tor (which will al­so be eased up by not hav­ing so many road-ac­ci­dent vic­tims to deal with).

Some oth­er en­ter­pris­ing per­son will in­vent a spe­cial light­weight pro­tec­tive cov­er­ing that sits on the head and stretch­es over the body to con­nect like a tent to the han­dle bars and back of bikes. The front of this "bike tent" will be trans­par­ent and po­larised to cut glare and pre­vent sun dam­age to eyes and skin. The rest of it will be made of a cool­ing fab­ric which al­lows air to cir­cu­late as the per­son rides.

The U of I&I (Uni­ver­si­ty of In­no­va­tion and In­ven­tion) will be es­tab­lished, train­ing young peo­ple to con­cep­tu­alise and de­vel­op their minds-to think out of the box and cre­ate the amaz­ing prod­ucts and equip­ment they have imag­ined. This process will em­pow­er the youths, en­abling them to de­vel­op con­crete cre­ative so­lu­tions to the na­tion's mul­ti­ple prob­lems. Their lev­el of self-worth, self-es­teem and sense of so­cial im­por­tance will sky­rock­et. Marked re­duc­tion in drug use and crime lev­els will be record­ed.

El­speth Dun­can

St Au­gus­tine