A suc­cess­ful test of two high-tech speed guns was con­duct­ed yes­ter­day on Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Port-of-Spain as part of a fea­si­bil­i­ty study aimed at in­tro­duc­ing the mea­sure to re­duce road ac­ci­dents. How­ev­er, the po­lice was not in­volved in the ex­er­cise con­duct­ed by ac­tivist group Ar­rive Alive which has been at the fore­front of a cam­paign to bring speed­ing mo­torists to book and in the process re­duce the amount of peo­ple killed on the na­tion's roads.

The tests caught many dri­vers ex­ceed­ing the speed lim­it of 50 kilo­me­tres per hour ap­plic­a­ble to the ur­ban dis­trict with many clock­ing in the vicin­i­ty of 68 kilo­me­tres per hour near Sweet Lime Restau­rant. The equip­ment used was a Tru Cam video recorder, which costs $75,000 and the Tru Speed S, worth $17,000, which al­lowed traf­fic of­fi­cials to record just how fast dri­vers were go­ing.

The test fol­lowed on com­plaints from res­i­dents and oth­er dri­vers that the new one-way traf­fic plan which went in­to ef­fect on Ju­ly 16 al­lowed for an abuse of the speed lim­it. Traf­fic en­gi­neer Adande Pig­gott said there had been nu­mer­ous com­plaints about dri­vers speed­ing since the new plan was in­tro­duced.

As part of the new ini­tia­tive park­ing has been banned along Ari­api­ta Av­enue which is now one-way. Pig­gott said this ef­fec­tive­ly turned the four-lane road in­to a high­way as dri­vers were tak­ing ad­van­tage of the open road­way and the free flow of traf­fic.

Re­mind­ing dri­vers that the area was a mix­ture of com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties, Pig­gott said the new traf­fic plan had been de­signed to "take away most of the points that caused fric­tion." Re­fer­ring to the speeds of some dri­vers yes­ter­day as "in­con­sid­er­ate," Pig­gott said the au­thor­i­ties will now have to re­view the ex­ist­ing traf­fic plan and ex­am­ine "traf­fic-calm­ing" mea­sures.

Among them is an in­crease in the num­ber of pedes­tri­an cross­ings, as well as an ad­just­ment to the lane widths, which it is hoped will get dri­vers to cut their speed. Pres­i­dent of Ar­rive Alive Brent Bat­son agreed with Pig­gott that the equip­ment pro­vid­ed by Lasertech was more ac­cu­rate and mod­ern than the tech­nol­o­gy cur­rent­ly used by the po­lice to de­ter­mine the speed of cars on the road.

Bat­son said he took ad­van­tage of an of­fer from the agent to do field tests, which could pro­vide use­ful da­ta to the au­thor­i­ties as leg­is­la­tion is yet to be en­act­ed so that dri­vers can be charged and pros­e­cut­ed us­ing ev­i­dence from speed guns. Lasertech agents Monique Walk­er and Rod­dy Tang Yew ex­plained that the new equip­ment which could mea­sure speed and dis­tance, was not yet in op­er­a­tion and was cur­rent­ly be­ing test­ed.

Walk­er said the Tru Cam re­sem­bled a hand­held gun and could cap­ture video footage and oth­er rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion which could be lat­er used by the po­lice to iden­ti­fy speed­sters. She said the two de­vices were easy to use and could save time as tick­ets could be sent in the mail af­ter po­lice viewed the cam­era footage. Walk­er as­sured that the in­for­ma­tion record­ed "can­not be tam­pered with."

Some dri­vers wel­comed the use of the new equip­ment, while oth­ers de­clined to com­ment. Two Wood­brook res­i­dents, who re­quest­ed that their names not be used, called on the po­lice to in­crease pa­trols in the area dur­ing peak hours, and es­pe­cial­ly on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day nights. One man said, "Dri­vers are al­ways speed­ing around here with lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion for the el­der­ly and chil­dren. We need the po­lice to be out more."