RYAN BA­CHOO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

A wrecked car stood at the front of the stage of the World Day of Re­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims Walk and Ride event, at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

Just be­hind the cau­tion tape, a man com­fort­ed a woman who was cry­ing. The mere sight of the ve­hi­cle brought back mem­o­ries of a loved one who had been lost to this damn­ing sta­tis­tic.

2023 has seen an in­crease of nine per cent in road traf­fic fa­tal­i­ties and the sta­tis­tic has of­fi­cials con­cerned as the coun­try inch­es clos­er to Christ­mas. It comes af­ter a decade which saw Trinidad and To­ba­go as the on­ly coun­try in the Caribbean re­gion and west­ern hemi­sphere to have achieved a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in road traf­fic deaths be­tween 2011 and 2020.

Scores of walk­ers and rid­ers showed up on Sun­day morn­ing for the an­nu­al event which start­ed 30 years ago. Among them, fam­i­ly mem­bers of road fa­tal­i­ty vic­tims, many of whom car­ried ban­ners with the faces of their late loved ones. Oth­ers wore jer­seys print­ed with im­ages of those they lost.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, Richie Sookhai, who was in at­ten­dance, an­nounced dur­ing his speech that those seek­ing pro­vi­sion­al li­cens­es will now be able to ap­ply on­line.

It is a move sup­port­ed by pres­i­dent of Ar­rive Alive, Sharon In­gle­field.

"We want to see that hap­pen AS­AP,” she told Guardian Me­dia. “We want to see more ed­u­ca­tion in the schools. We want to see the po­lice out there en­forc­ing the speed lim­it—the speed lim­it in par­tic­u­lar around the Sa­van­nah, our high­ways and our main roads. Speed is num­ber one killer."

Min­is­ter Sookhai said in 2024, through the work of the re­cent­ly re­con­sti­tut­ed Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Coun­cil spear­head­ed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, con­sid­er­able at­ten­tion will be placed on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of road safe­ty pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives.

"The Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Coun­cil has al­so for­mu­lat­ed a draft Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Plan which lays the foun­da­tion for strate­gic in­ter­ven­tion to re­duce road fa­tal­i­ties and se­ri­ous road traf­fic ac­ci­dents," he said.

He elab­o­rat­ed fur­ther, adding: "Strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion with en­ti­ties such as the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, T&T Fire Ser­vice, the Min­istry of Health, and Ar­rive Alive have played a piv­otal role in our suc­cess... By work­ing hand-in-hand with oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies and civ­il so­ci­ety, we can am­pli­fy our im­pact and dri­ve pos­i­tive be­hav­iour­al change at the in­di­vid­ual lev­el and wider so­ci­ety."

Mean­while, Wood­side En­er­gy, which sup­port­ed the event as its main spon­sor, has vowed to part­ner with all en­ti­ties in a bid to re­duce road fa­tal­i­ties.

Coun­try Man­ag­er of Wood­side En­er­gy, Kellyanne Lochan, stat­ed:

"We should tar­get the ab­solute—the num­ber ‘ze­ro’.  That we should dare to go af­ter a tar­get which says that we can make a con­tin­u­ous, a nev­er-end­ing type of im­prove­ment year-on-year in all as­pects of our road safe­ty—our sta­tis­tics, our be­hav­iour—so that we will, year-on-year, al­ways im­prove and nev­er ever be con­tent un­til we reach that num­ber ‘ze­ro’."