Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Speed-mon­i­tor­ing zones will be in place by mid-June in a bid to curb road fa­tal­i­ties on the high­ways. This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, a day af­ter he vis­it­ed Ap­peal Court judge Wen­dell Kan­ga­loo, who sur­vived Sun­day's crash at Trinci­ty. The ac­ci­dent left four peo­ple dead. As he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing of the Wood­ford Lodge Work­force De­vel­op­ment Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre in Ch­agua­nas, Warn­er said "speed, al­co­hol, in­ex­pe­ri­ence and stu­pid­i­ty" were re­spon­si­ble for the road car­nage. He added: "Every week­end this coun­try faces a car­nage and yes­ter­day morn­ing (Sun­day) was no dif­fer­ent. We face the car­nage on week­ends in­volv­ing peo­ple be­tween the ages of 18 to 24 for four rea­sons-num­ber one is be­cause of speed, num­ber two is al­co­hol, three is in­ex­pe­ri­ence and four is stu­pid­i­ty. Yes, some of them dri­ve stu­pid."

He said the po­lice points which have been set up along the var­i­ous high­ways will be com­mis­sioned by June 13. "All stake­hold­ers met last week and a test case will be done on June 6 but every­thing will be ready by June 13," Warn­er said. He al­so not­ed that many peo­ple want­ed Gov­ern­ment to build ca­ble bar­ri­ers. "But how many bar­ri­ers can we build? How high will you build them? That can­not be the an­swer." He said T&T must copy the British mod­el and pe­nalise road­hogs for dan­ger­ous dri­ving. "We must have cam­eras through­out the length and breadth of the coun­try, where peo­ple can be charged and in two weeks' time, they will pay their fines. Af­ter three fines they will be banned from dri­ving. We have to do that. It is the on­ly way," Warn­er said. The Wood­ford Lodge Cen­tre will as­sist in keep­ing ve­hi­cles safe, he added. He said he did not agree with a call from Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj to pe­nalise bar own­ers for road ac­ci­dents as there was no ev­i­dence to sug­gest they were re­spon­si­ble for ac­ci­dents.