Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

By Fri­day night, a friend of mine was so dis­traught over the deaths of twin girls in a ter­ri­ble car crash the pre­vi­ous week­end that she was de­mand­ing Gov­ern­ment im­pose a new state of emer­gency. There are too many young peo­ple dy­ing on our roads, she said; this is se­ri­ous and a state of emer­gency would help man­age the prob­lem.An­oth­er friend said that adults, es­pe­cial­ly par­ents, need­ed to be more re­spon­si­ble. What were those 18-year-olds, who were sit­ting ex­ams, do­ing in a night­club any­way? Par­ents shouldn't let their chil­dren go out to par­ties that young, he said.Hav­ing had an 18-year-old daugh­ter, I'm pret­ty sure that even if I had banned her then, the risk would still be very present to­day that she'll go to a par­ty at age 20, take the wrong drop home and end up in a road ac­ci­dent.God for­bid it hap­pens, but I'm cer­tain the par­ents of Khadi­jah and Kher­ti­ma Tay­lor, Kafiya Gill and Chris Sookoo weren't ex­pect­ing that par­tic­u­lar phone call ei­ther.

The truth is that ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents, like the poor, will be with us al­ways. The ques­tion is what is the best way to han­dle this cul­ture of reck­less, drunk and/or tired dri­ving that re­sults in fa­tal car ac­ci­dents.I re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree with my friend who thinks a state of emer­gency and cur­few would have an im­pact. I re­mem­ber the last SoE cur­few, dur­ing which peo­ple just got drunk and sped home ear­li­er, so that in­stead of at 4 am ac­ci­dents hap­pened at 10 pm.Ban­ning al­co­hol is no so­lu­tion, ei­ther. Pro­hi­bi­tion does not work; the US tried it and it failed. From the per­sis­tence of our own T&T mar­i­jua­na con­sump­tion one can rea­son­ably con­clude that ban­ning some­thing doesn't guar­an­tee it won't con­tin­ue to be avail­able.Does re­duc­ing the road fa­tal­i­ty sta­tis­tics re­quire some oth­er leg­isla­tive or gov­ern­men­tal in­ter­ven­tion? Per­haps.Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field was quot­ed in a news­pa­per last week as say­ing: "We need to en­act laws that en­hance and make young dri­vers more com­pe­tent and I am specif­i­cal­ly re­turn­ing to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Road Traf­fic Act, speed man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion, as well as im­prov­ing dri­ver com­pe­ten­cy by prac­ti­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal de­fen­sive dri­ving made manda­to­ry."We need to en­act the point sys­tem so we now have penal­ties and there­fore en­sure that when we want to be law­less we know that the heavy hand is up­on us."

We al­ready have laws against drunk dri­ving, laws against speed­ing, and laws against over­load­ing ve­hi­cles (the twins and their friend were among six peo­ple in a five-seat car). What we need is more con­sis­tent en­force­ment.I dis­agree with In­gle­field's point­ing the fin­ger at young dri­vers; I my­self am no spring chick­en and I near­ly ploughed in­to a woman and child one Ash Thurs­day morn­ing a few years ago. It hap­pened af­ter I had played J'Ou­vert, and then mas on Mon­day and Tues­day, and limed on Ash Wednes­day night, to boot. I wasn't drunk, just ex­haust­ed. It was 8 am and what stopped the ac­ci­dent was my wak­ing up when the car rolled off the road on to the grav­el of the shoul­der where the woman and child were stand­ing.Back to Fri­day night's heat­ed dis­cus­sion. We agreed that po­lice should im­pose so­bri­ety checks out­side of clubs to at least breathal­yse would-be dri­vers be­fore they get be­hind the wheel.

We al­so need to em­brace the cul­ture of the des­ig­nat­ed dri­ver, in­stead of mak­ing it so hard for peo­ple to re­main sober while lim­ing. (Have you ever or­dered club so­da at a bar? Peo­ple look at you like you're some kind of freak and pres­sure you to get a "re­al drink.")Most im­por­tant­ly, we should all–young and old–be more thought­ful dri­vers. Dri­ving drunk, dri­ving while tired, and dri­ving reck­less­ly are all re­spon­si­ble for the car­nage on our roads; and the one thing they have in com­mon across in­come groups, ages, races and ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tions is that they are all avoid­able.A T&T Guardian re­port pub­lished af­ter the twins' ac­ci­dent said, "Min­is­ter of Trans­port Chan­dresh Shar­ma said yes­ter­day that T&T has over 35,000 mo­tor col­li­sions per year–rough­ly one col­li­sion every 20 min­utes. He said more than 200 peo­ple die in ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents each year."This is an epi­dem­ic. What are we go­ing to do? More per­ti­nent­ly, what are you, as a dri­ver, go­ing to do?