An­na-Lisa Paul

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says po­lice of­fi­cers will soon have more speed guns to use as ef­forts con­tin­ue to make T&T's roads safer for mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans.

He said this mea­sure will be sup­port­ed by leg­is­la­tion to in­tro­duce a points sys­tem as an ad­di­tion­al penal­ty for delin­quent dri­vers.

The min­ster, who spoke at Ar­rive Alive's Walk and Ride at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day for World Day of Re­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims, re­vealed that he has lost rel­a­tives to road ac­ci­dents.

"The grief and im­pact are long last­ing, of­ten per­ma­nent," he said.

Sinanan said while sta­tis­tics from the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch show a de­crease in fa­tal ac­ci­dents, there is still a lot of work to do."

If each dri­ver in T&T pledged to al­ways fol­low the rules of the road, that is no drink­ing and dri­ving, no tex­ting and talk­ing on the phone and no speed­ing, we can over­all de­crease road ac­ci­dents and fa­tal­i­ties," he said.

Speak­ing in sup­port of the UN's procla­ma­tion of a decade of ac­tion for road safe­ty, Sinanan said the Traf­fic Man­age­ment Branch is in­volved in sev­er­al projects to make the roads safer. These in­clude ad­di­tion­al fea­tures to as­sist at pedes­tri­an cross­ings, in­clud­ing head sig­nals, bells, im­proved sig­nage and re­paint­ing of 180 km of road mark­ings.

Fur­ther ef­forts will in­clude re­design­ing high­ways with in­for­ma­tion­al signs; place­ment of road studs in high risk ar­eas to il­lu­mi­nate road­ways for greater safe­ty; plac­ing New Jer­sey slip form bar­ri­ers be­tween Or­ange Grove and Pi­ar­co to sep­a­rate traf­fic lanes; es­tab­lish­ing un­in­ter­rupt­ed pow­er sup­ply for traf­fic sig­nals; red light en­force­ment leg­is­la­tion; and in­stalling spe­cial ac­ces­si­ble pedes­tri­an sig­nal de­vices to help vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­sons cross the streets.

Road safe­ty ad­vo­cate Brent Bat­son com­pared reck­less dri­vers to crim­i­nals who is us­ing use and knives to take in­no­cent lives.

Yes­ter­day's event, which was spon­sored by BHP Bil­li­ton, was sup­port­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice through DCP De­o­dath Du­lalchan who as­sured that road safe­ty is one of their strate­gic pri­or­i­ty goals.

Bat­son said up to yes­ter­day, 110 road deaths had been record­ed–a 14 per cent de­crease over last year's fig­ures. He ap­pealed to mo­torists to act re­spon­si­bly dur­ing the up­com­ing Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons.

"The de­ploy­ment of laser speed guns has had a con­sid­er­able ef­fect on rais­ing the speed aware­ness of the mo­tor­ing pub­lic and en­sur­ing com­pli­ance" he said.

"From the po­lice per­spec­tive, there are on­ly so many tick­ets we can write."