Jensen La Vende

Try­ing to find who was at fault in Mon­day night's ac­ci­dent that left six peo­ple dead is not of great con­cern to the po­lice ser­vice, since both dri­vers died and no one can be pros­e­cut­ed. What the law­men hope to achieve is get­ting dri­vers to be more cau­tious and cour­te­ous on the road.

Speak­ing at the week­ly po­lice press brief­ing yes­ter­day, Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor, Con­sta­ble Brent Bat­son, re­mind­ed dri­vers that af­ter you have re­ceived the green light you should still wait three to four sec­onds be­fore pro­ceed­ing through an in­ter­sec­tion. He said a col­league who ar­rived at the scene and saw "flesh and steel in­ter­twined" was so trau­ma­tised he had to leave.

Bat­son said there are now plans to roll out sev­en traf­fic light cam­eras that cap­ture way­ward dri­vers who zoom through stop lights, adding that the nec­es­sary leg­isla­tive back­ing is ex­pect­ed to be tak­en to Par­lia­ment soon.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, the Ro­main broth­ers, Kwme and Ka­reem, along with Ka­reem's best friend Che Pe­ters and Travis Teague' were head­ing east along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, when on reach­ing the O'Meara in­ter­sec­tion Teague's Mit­subishi CK Lancer col­lid­ed with an Isuzu pick-up head­ing south along O'Meara Road dri­ven by Ramish Nar­ine. All the pas­sen­gers in Teague's ve­hi­cle, ex­cept for Kwme, died on the scene, as did three oc­cu­pants of the truck, in­clud­ing Nar­ine, Av­erniel Thomas and Tim­o­thy Fras­er. The de­ceased from the pick-up were all em­ployed with Spe­cial Elite In­ves­ti­ga­tions Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and were on their way home af­ter work.

Asked about sug­ges­tions that rear seat pas­sen­gers al­so be legal­ly ob­lig­at­ed to wear seat­belts, Bat­son said: "There were plans in the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty Bill to im­ple­ment it as manda­to­ry, once the ve­hi­cle is equipped with back seat belts, that pas­sen­gers be man­dat­ed to im­ple­ment it. But the new bill, I have not seen it writ­ten there, so I will have to fol­low up on it.

"But we wel­come any­thing that rais­es safe­ty on the roads. Even if it means we all have to buck­le up cause it makes sense since the rear seat oc­cu­pants will face al­most the same forces as the front seat oc­cu­pants dur­ing a col­li­sion." Al­so speak­ing at yes­ter­day's brief­ing was ASP Har­ri­nar­ine Ram­path, who said for the year there were $10,233,000 worth of speed­ing tick­ets is­sued, as well as 2,605 of­fens­es of dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol. He said be­gin­ning yes­ter­day there was to be an in­crease in road ex­er­cis­es crack­ing own on speed­sters and in­tox­i­cat­ed dri­vers.