Mo­torists can look for­ward to a greater po­lice pres­ence on the roads to com­bat fa­tal­i­ties. Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son said so last week, speak­ing at the first road safe­ty break­fast con­sul­ta­tion held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel. The meet­ing was an ini­tia­tive of the Min­istry of Trans­port and the T&T Bev­er­age Al­co­hol Al­liance, with the sup­port of var­i­ous min­istries and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs).

Richard­son said last year there were 188 road fa­tal­i­ties. He pledged the po­lice ser­vice's sup­port for the min­istry's road safe­ty cam­paign. A meet­ing was held with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams and oth­ers, Richard­son said, at which strate­gies to com­bat road crimes and fa­tal­i­ties were ad­dressed.

Em­pha­sis will be placed on the Sir Solomon Ho­choy, Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way and Au­drey Jef­fers High­ways, he said. He sound­ed a warn­ing to dri­vers, say­ing that while he hoped the pub­lic would re­spond to moral sua­sion, the po­lice were com­mit­ted to en­forc­ing the law.

He not­ed an up­surge in dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol. Sev­en peo­ple were re­cent­ly fined $35,000 for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence in an ex­er­cise in the East. Ear­li­er, Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas, Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, said it might be ex­cus­able for some­one to go five or even ten miles over the speed lim­it, but Richard­son said the po­lice would not ac­cept any­thing over the speed lim­it and urged dri­vers to stay with­in it.

"To im­pact crime, we must first win the bat­tle on the road," Richard­son said. More of­fi­cers were com­mit­ted to the south­ern high­way and of­fi­cers are do­ing what they can in or­der to keep peo­ple alive. He al­so said dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son of­fi­cers will be out in force.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore and Dou­glas were present for the road safe­ty cam­paign launch and pledged their sup­port.