Cherisse Moe

Young males be­tween the ages of 15-24 con­tin­ue to be the high­est group of road fa­tal­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go, says Brent Bat­son, di­rec­tor of Ar­rive Alive. Bat­son yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed his call for the au­thor­i­ties to play a greater role in help­ing to curb the es­ca­lat­ing num­ber of road ac­ci­dents by launch­ing road safe­ty ini­tia­tives and en­force­ment strate­gies specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing young males.

These strate­gies, he said, must be ramped up on week­ends, es­pe­cial­ly Sat­ur­days, for sig­nif­i­cant re­sults. Bat­son's com­ments come on the heels of three sep­a­rate road ac­ci­dents over the past three days which claimed the lives of five peo­ple, the lat­est be­ing Po­lice Con­sta­ble Wayne Tay­lor.

Tay­lor of Gran­ite Av­enue, San­ta Rosa, died on the scene when his ve­hi­cle crashed at 2.15 am yes­ter­day along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way in Trinci­ty. On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, broth­ers Kevon James, 22; An­tho­ny Stephan James, 20; and their cousin Ker­ry Joseph, 19, of Up­per Whar­ton Street, Laven­tille, al­so died when the ve­hi­cle in which they were trav­el­ling slammed in­to a bar at the cor­ner of New and Char­lotte Streets, Port-of-Spain.

And mere hours be­fore, 28-year-old Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) em­ploy­ee Dex­ter Ifill was killed af­ter the com­pa­ny ve­hi­cle he was dri­ving struck a light pole and plunged in­to the sea at Sea Lots on Fri­day. "What is most dis­turb­ing is the av­er­age age of six of the per­sons who died in the crash­es is 27 years and 100 per cent were male," said Bat­son.

"This col­li­sion trend is an ex­act pre­dic­tion of Prof God­frey St Bernard in his pre­sen­ta­tion at the In­ter­na­tion­al Roads Fed­er­a­tion Con­fer­ence on Road Safe­ty held in Ja­maica last week, spon­sored by the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank," he said.

Bat­son said Prof Bernard, who is al­so the chair­man of the Re­search & Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee of the Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Coun­cil warned of the neg­a­tive de­mo­graph­i­cal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pact of road ac­ci­dents, which he said con­tin­ues to plague young males.

Bat­son said Ar­rive Alive was do­ing its part to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem. He said the group to­geth­er with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is cur­rent­ly pi­lot­ing an es­say and art com­pe­ti­tion called Be Road Wise to be launched in both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

He said of­fi­cials of the US-based road safe­ty ad­vo­cate group Moth­ers Against Drunk Dri­ving (MADD) is al­so sched­uled to vis­it T&T in Oc­to­ber to host a sym­po­sium tar­get­ing young dri­vers. The sym­po­sium is to be host­ed by Jonathan Ca­ma­cho's Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Road Safe­ty and the Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Coun­cil.