Geisha Kow­lessar

Two key fac­tors in a pro­posed plan to deal with road fa­tal­i­ties and ac­ci­dents are leg­is­la­tion and the use of tech­nol­o­gy. The plan is be­ing put to­geth­er by for­mer As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (Mo­bile) Wayne Richards and for­mer pres­i­dent of Ar­rive Alive Brent Bat­son. Richards, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said the plan was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed and de­liv­ered to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs by next month. He said the tech­nol­o­gy plan in­clud­ed the in­stal­la­tion of de­vices, like radar guns, which would as­sist po­lice in mon­i­tor­ing speed. Richards, who said he was pleased with the de­vel­op­ment of the plan thus far, said the cost was yet to be quan­ti­fied.

Road ac­ci­dents, he said, were caused by a num­ber of fac­tors, in­clud­ing speed, dri­ver er­ror and road con­di­tions. Part of the re­search en­tailed in­ter­views with po­lice of­fi­cers from dif­fer­ent de­part­ments, in­clud­ing South­ern Di­vi­sion, of­fi­cials from the Po­lice Acad­e­my and of­fi­cers from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Unit. The plan al­so fo­cused on the ex­tent to which the traf­fic laws have been abused. "We do have a ques­tion of the abuse of goods ve­hi­cles on the road­way with re­spect to un­se­cured loads. Us­ing wrong tyres is an­oth­er is­sue and there are dri­vers who are not obe­di­ent and who have no con­cern for oth­ers," Richards added. He said 13 sur­veil­lance bays are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed along the Uri­ah But­ler and Solomon Ho­choy High­ways. But as fast as the bays were con­struct­ed, parts were be­ing de­stroyed by er­rant dri­vers, he added.

Say­ing the time had come for dri­vers to be held ac­count­able for de­struc­tion of prop­er­ty, Richards said: "Peo­ple are knock­ing down parts of the bays and we have to find a way to re­coup that mon­ey." Each bay will have a cam­era to mon­i­tor a stretch of the high­way. Trinidad and To­ba­go was a sig­na­to­ry to the Unit­ed Na­tions Decade of Ac­tion for Road Safe­ty 2011-2020.

Its ob­jec­tives in­clude:

• Draw­ing at­ten­tion to the decade and the im­pact of the glob­al road-safe­ty cri­sis and the prospects for pre­ven­tion; and

• pro­vid­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty for gov­ern­ments, in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, civ­il-so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, the pri­vate sec­tor and oth­er stake­hold­ers to an­nounce their plans for the decade. In terms of oblig­a­tions, Richards said that meant the coun­try would have to fall in line with oth­er coun­tries to re­duce road ac­ci­dents and car­nage. "It is not on­ly aimed at law-en­force­ment of­fi­cials but al­so at dri­vers be­cause if you don't use it wise­ly a ve­hi­cle can be­come a weapon."