Derek Achong

Delin­quent dri­vers who rou­tine­ly rack up traf­fic tick­ets may now face sus­pen­sion of their dri­ving li­cences un­der a new scheme be­ing pro­posed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Wayne Richards, road safe­ty ad­vo­cate Brent Bat­son and pres­i­dent of road safe­ty aware­ness Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Ar­rive Alive, Sharon In­gle­field, all agreed that the move for harsh­er penal­ties against delin­quent dri­vers would have a di­rect im­pact on the high num­ber ac­ci­dents and road fa­tal­i­ties record­ed over the past few years.

While the trio, who were con­sult­ed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port be­fore a draft pol­i­cy was pub­lished in Ju­ly, said they ex­pect­ed the new sys­tem would have been im­ple­ment­ed "soon". How­ev­er, new­ly-ap­point­ed Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says it was not part of the min­istry's im­me­di­ate plans.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Sinanan said: "The leg­is­la­tion is there but there is still time to go be­fore it can be im­ple­ment­ed."

Bat­son, who is al­so a po­lice of­fi­cer with the High­way Pa­trol and Traf­fic Branch, said that the sys­tem would aug­ment the cur­rent in­ef­fec­tive tick­et­ing sys­tem.

"There are on­ly so much tick­ets traf­fic law en­force­ment of­fi­cers can write to dri­vers. The de­mer­it points sys­tem lends more cre­dence and weight to the con­se­quences of un­safe dri­ving de­ci­sions and ac­tions,"he added..

With the Unit­ed Na­tions Day of Re­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims be­ing com­mem­o­rat­ed to­mor­row, both Richards and Bat­son called on dri­vers to keep in mind the num­ber of peo­ple who lost their lives each year in road traf­fic ac­ci­dents when dri­ving dan­ger­ous­ly in the fu­ture.

"We (the po­lice) ask the pub­lic to re­flect on the fact that 111 per­sons were killed on road­ways in T&T in 2016 so far and to vi­su­alise 111 fam­i­lies across T&T that are go­ing to have emp­ty spaces this Christ­mas and won­der how they can have a Mer­ry Christ­mas," Bat­son said.

For the com­pa­ra­ble pe­ri­od last year 129 peo­ple were killed in road ac­ci­dents.

Bat­son said that in terms of in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings T&T ranks close with the Unit­ed States in terms of the num­ber of road traf­fic ac­ci­dents per capi­ta.

"The thing about it, is it is not good to be com­pared to the US in this be­cause we have less kilo­me­tres of road. So it means more peo­ple are killed in a small­er en­vi­ron­ment," Bat­son said.

"The mes­sage we are try­ing to get out is the coun­try is small. Where you go­ing to reach with speed," Bat­son said.

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Richards called on dri­vers to con­sid­er the ef­fects of road traf­fic ac­ci­dents apart from fa­tal­i­ties.

"An ac­ci­dent, due to an er­ror on be­half of one, can cost the coun­try hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, man­pow­er and pain and suf­fer­ing to so many. There­fore the road traf­fic laws and reg­u­la­tions is placed for each and every one of us so we can have a har­mon­ic re­la­tions.

"With sim­ple things like us­ing of cell­phone while dri­ving and obey­ing the speed lim­it, re­spect it for what its worth and for the rest of the coun­try," Richards said.

Re­mem­ber­ing ac­ci­dent vic­tims

To com­mem­o­rate Unit­ed Na­tions Day ofRe­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims, Ar­rive Alive is host­ing its an­nu­al Walk and Ride from the Queen's Park Oval car park on Eliz­a­beth Street, St Clair, at 8 am to­mor­row. The event will al­so fea­ture an ex­pand­ed Traf­fic Vil­lage, which will fea­ture demon­stra­tions on road safe­ty.

"This event is com­mem­o­rat­ed around the world and is so sig­nif­i­cant due to amount of per­sons lost every year on the roads across the world... 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple," she said.

In­gle­field, whose son Jonathan was killed in an ac­ci­dent in 2009, said her or­gan­i­sa­tion would be fo­cus­ing spe­cial­ly on pedes­tri­ans as a high num­ber have been killed in ac­ci­dents be­tween last year and this year.

"This year and last year al­most the same amount of pedes­tri­ans have died and as dri­vers we want to re­mind them that they are the ones who are most vul­ner­a­ble. We urge them to cross the roads re­spon­si­bly, to wear flu­o­res­cent or iri­des­cent cloth­ing once it is dark be­cause it was very dif­fi­cult for dri­vers to see peo­ple cross­ing the road at night," she said.

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