Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

As the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice laments an uptick in road fa­tal­i­ties, the Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter says that soon there may be a name-and-shame dri­ve to change the cul­ture by mo­torists.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, TTPS Road Safe­ty Co-or­di­na­tor, Sergeant Brent Bat­son, an­nounced that at the time of the in­ter­view, there were 61 road deaths for the year. For the same pe­ri­od last year, Bat­son said that fig­ure stood at 55.

“We can­not tick­et our way out of a prob­lem, it can­not be the an­swer. But un­for­tu­nate­ly, it seems as if the po­lice have to be around 24/7 for per­sons to just do the right thing,” Bat­son lament­ed.

In 2023, there were 96 fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dents. The year be­fore that, there were 95.

Bat­son said, “I al­ways re­mind per­sons that once they in­creased that speed lim­it from 80kph to 100kph the type of en­er­gy in­volved when im­pacts hap­pen are gen­er­al­ly in the cat­e­go­ry from se­vere to dead­ly and this is even worse when pedes­tri­ans get it. The im­pact is of­ten un­sur­viv­able.”

But dur­ing a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia asked Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan if con­sid­er­a­tion would be giv­en to re­vis­it­ing the speed lim­it giv­en the in­crease in fa­tal­i­ties.

“Speed lim­its are set based on the de­signs of the road. So, in­creas­ing or de­creas­ing the speed lim­it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly help you with an ac­ci­dent. In most cas­es you find fa­tal ac­ci­dents oc­cur when peo­ple ex­ceed the speed lim­it. So even if you re­duce it, they were break­ing it in the first place,” Sinanan re­spond­ed.

He said it comes down to per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, which is why his min­istry is re-ex­am­in­ing the ex­ist­ing de­mer­it point sys­tem.

“There were some peo­ple who felt they could break the traf­fic light when they want­ed be­cause the fine was just $300, and they could pay that any time. But once the de­mer­it points came in, they didn’t want to lose their li­cence. So, the cul­ture start­ed to change,” Sinanan posit­ed.

The min­is­ter said it may now be time to go a step fur­ther by pub­licly em­bar­rass­ing the of­fend­ing dri­vers.

“How­ev­er, we do have sys­tems in there where we have to serve you when we have to can­cel your per­mit. And in a lot of cas­es, it is dif­fi­cult to find the per­son so we are re­view­ing that sys­tem where we would say we may not have to serve you we just need to pub­lish your name,” Sinanan an­nounced.

De­mer­it points are de­duct­ed once the dri­ver ex­ceeds 10 km or more.

Mean­while, fol­low­ing the death of prison of­fi­cer Ma­hen­dra Ram­di­al who was knocked down by a car when he tried to help vic­tims of a car ac­ci­dent on the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way, ear­ly on Sun­day morn­ing, Sergeant Bat­son had a word of cau­tion for oth­ers.

“Al­ways re­mem­ber once we are on the high­way you are en­ter­ing a realm where there are too much haz­ards that you can­not con­trol. Mul­ti­ple things can hap­pen in a short space of time,” he ad­vised.

Bat­son said you can still be a hero from a dis­tance.

“There is noth­ing wrong with wait­ing for first re­spon­ders. You help by call­ing 999, you help by call­ing 811, you help by call­ing 990, that means you’ve trig­gered the emer­gency re­sponse mech­a­nism to have trained per­son­nel on the site. If you think it is un­safe for you to go across to the ve­hi­cle or per­son, then don’t go be­cause your safe­ty is pri­or­i­ty num­ber one,” Bat­son said.