Although road safety activists are calling for more caution and enforcement of laws on T&T's roadways, Minister of Transport Chandresh Sharma said yesterday the situation is not all "bad news."Sharma's comments at a symposium on road safety hosted by the Jonathan Camacho Organisation for Road Safety (J-Cors) at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, followed remarks by Sharon Inglefield, president of Arrive Alive and Dr Andrew Persad of Rose Environmental Ltd.
Inglefield and Persad shared local and international statistics on road fatalities and called for stricter enforcement of laws.Persad said even though the breathalyser has been introduced locally, road fatalities remained too high for a country this small. He said more police officers need training on how to use and maintain the machines, more roadblocks need to be carried out, fines for drunk driving need to be more consistent and a DUI (driving under the influence) task force should be set up.
Inglefield said there were 11,000 injuries a year in T&T because of road collisions. She also said T&T was ranked 15th in the world for road fatalities per capita."Without enforcement we'll be talking about this for the next ten years...We can't continue to educate people without enforcement," she said.Inglefield's suggestions included evaluations of emergency response to collisions, more crash investigations, pedestrian education and an elite traffic management force.
The UN launched a decade of Action for Road Safety in 2011, according to Inglefield, and T&T has signed a resolution to reduce road fatalities by 50 per cent in the next ten years. She said this country needs to become more active about making the reduction a reality. However, Sharma said the statistics mentioned were not "certified" and there was a reduction of road deaths in 2010 which meant "something is working." In 2009 and 2010 there were 222 and 206 road deaths respectively. In 2012, there were 193.
He said the Ministry of Transport has been working with NGOs and international agencies on a collective approach to road safety.Sharma added that T&T is a "law abiding country" and it should not be said that everyone is careless, or that all accidents are alcohol related. He said statistics should be carefully communicated and accurate so as not to mislead the public.
Other speakers at the symposium included Jan Withers and Joseph Sikes of the American organisation Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Junior Serrette of Unipet. J-Cors was founded in 2010 and is named after 20-year-old Jonathan Camacho who died in a road accident in February 2010.