On Tues­day at a Road Safe­ty Awards Cer­e­mo­ny host­ed by Ar­rive Alive, the na­tion was up­dat­ed on progress in achiev­ing a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in road deaths and in­juries dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2021-2030, a di­rect re­sult of im­ple­ment­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Glob­al Plan for a Decade of Ac­tion for Road Safe­ty.

T&T seems to be on track with that goal, as As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice - Op­er­a­tions Joanne Archie re­port­ed that there has been a con­tin­u­ous de­cline in fa­tal road ac­ci­dents in the last four years, with a 22 per cent re­duc­tion in fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dents and road fa­tal­i­ties last year.

How­ev­er, we still have a long way to go. The day af­ter the Ar­rive Alive event, there was a heartrend­ing re­minder of the con­sid­er­able work still to be done for T&T to achieve that road safe­ty goal.

Sari­ka Rame­sar, a 42-year-old wife and moth­er, was killed when an out of con­trol six-wheel­er 10-tonne truck ploughed in­to the parked ve­hi­cle in which she was seat­ed with her hus­band and son. The fam­i­ly’s Hyundai Tuc­son was parked on the shoul­der of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion in Debe around 4.30 pm when tragedy struck.

For Ms Rame­sar’s griev­ing rel­a­tives, the news that few­er peo­ple are dy­ing on T&T’s roads will be of no com­fort as they strug­gle to come to terms with her death.

Every life lost in a traf­fic ac­ci­dent is one too many and ac­cord­ing to the World Bank, the loss is not on­ly for the be­reaved but al­so for the wider so­ci­ety be­cause many crash vic­tims are of work­ing age.

So, T&T can­not af­ford to be com­pla­cent on the is­sue of road safe­ty or set­tle for what­ev­er in­cre­men­tal progress has been made so far, such as up­dat­ed road traf­fic laws.

Safer roads re­quire much more than leg­is­la­tion, which is why the Com­pre­hen­sive Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Mas­ter Plan cur­rent­ly be­ing de­vel­oped by the Works and Trans­port Min­istry and oth­er stake­hold­ers is so im­por­tant.

De­tails have not been made pub­lic but Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has promised a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the coun­try’s trans­port net­work.

Mak­ing T&T’s roads safer re­quires much more than crack­ing down on speed­ing and oth­er breach­es of road traf­fic laws. It is al­so im­por­tant to deal with the state of roads and re­lat­ed in­fra­struc­ture.

Da­ta col­lect­ed on the caus­es of many crash­es shows that fac­tors such as skid­ding and los­ing con­trol, fail­ure to keep to the prop­er traf­fic lanes and smash­ing in­to con­crete elec­tric­i­ty poles and be­ing se­ri­ous­ly in­jured or killed are com­mon caus­es of in­juries and deaths.

There are al­so road­ways across the coun­try that have been deemed death strips be­cause they have been the lo­ca­tions of many fa­tal crash­es over the years. The dead­liest of them is a 700-me­tre por­tion of the M2 Ring Road in Debe.

A few weeks ago, Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed did a spe­cial re­port on an­oth­er road­way as­so­ci­at­ed with fre­quent ac­ci­dents, the in­ter­sec­tion of Ma­coya Road and the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route.

All this un­der­scores the fact that road safe­ty is an ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly com­plex is­sue. Pro­duc­ing a com­pre­hen­sive plan will re­quire in­put from a range of ex­perts and ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions but it is im­por­tant to get it right as many lives de­pend on it.