JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

4,348 speeding tickets issued since demerit system in effect

by

Joel Julien
1692 days ago
20201115
Firemen at the scene of the accident along the Manzanilla/Mayaro Road where Sascha Surujbally, 20, and her three-month-old baby, Soria lost their lives last Friday.

Firemen at the scene of the accident along the Manzanilla/Mayaro Road where Sascha Surujbally, 20, and her three-month-old baby, Soria lost their lives last Friday.

GUARDIAN MEDIA

A to­tal of 4,348 speed­ing tick­ets have been is­sued to mo­torists since the de­mer­it points sys­tem be­came op­er­a­tionalised in this coun­try at the end of May, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has said.

For the same pe­ri­od 8,075 seat belt tick­ets and 7,511 tick­ets for breach­es of traf­fic sig­nals have been record­ed he said.

“The num­bers don’t lie they tell the tale of road users who dis­re­gard their own safe­ty and the safe­ty of oth­ers,” Sinanan said.

“The peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for these vi­o­la­tions be­have as though an ac­ci­dent can­not hap­pen to them, they vi­o­late traf­fic laws as if obliv­i­ous to the fact that in the blink of an eye their fate, the fate of oth­er pas­sen­gers and even that of un­sus­pect­ing by­standers. Vic­tims can be se­ri­ous­ly in­jured be­cause of their reck­less­ness,” he said.

“We need to be more care­ful on the roads of T&T sim­ply be­cause one death is one too many so let us com­mit to be­ing more thought­ful and vig­i­lant,” Sinanan said.

Sinanan made the state­ments yes­ter­day as he de­liv­ered an ad­dress as Ar­rive Alive host­ed a vir­tu­al event on so­cial me­dia to com­mem­o­rate the World Day of Re­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims.

Every year on the third Sun­day in No­vem­ber the world re­mem­bers the mil­lions of lives lost and per­sons in­jured on the world’s roads.

The theme for this year’s event was “Re­mem­ber, Sup­port, Act.”

A re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice said records in­di­cate that 78 per­sons have lost their lives in road traf­fic ac­ci­dents to date in 2020.

“Al­though this fig­ure rep­re­sents a 25 per cent re­duc­tion from the pre­vi­ous year 2019, this fig­ure is still un­ac­cept­ably high due to the pre­ventable na­ture of many of these in­ci­dents,” the TTPS stat­ed.

The TTPS said this year’s World Day of Re­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims was “even more im­por­tant and holds a greater sense of sig­nif­i­cance as it is set against the back­drop of the death of Sasha Sura­jbal­ly, 21, and her three-month-old ba­by, So­ri­ah fol­low­ing a car crash along the Man­zanil­la Ma­yaro Road on Fri­day.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, has set road polic­ing as one of the TTPS’s key na­tion­al polic­ing goals to en­sure and pre­serve pub­lic safe­ty, the re­lease stat­ed.

“The sus­tained ef­forts of the Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch re­sult­ed in a 52 per cent re­duc­tion in road traf­fic deaths across the na­tion’s high­ways. This is due to re­lent­less traf­fic en­force­ment ex­er­cis­es tar­get­ing high-risk of­fences such as Ex­ceed­ing Speed Lim­its, Dri­ving Un­der the In­flu­ence (DUI), Seat­belt-use and Dis­tract­ed Dri­ving,” it stat­ed.

The TTPS con­tin­ued, “The Traf­fic Branch Mo­tor­cy­cle Sec­tion and Road Polic­ing Task Force of­ten adopt a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to their en­force­ment ef­forts, as a means of re­duc­ing the risk caused by un­safe dri­ving be­hav­iours. How­ev­er, such a po­si­tion is un­for­tu­nate­ly of­ten times mis­in­ter­pret­ed as “op­pres­sive” by mo­torists who are un­able to see the big­ger pic­ture, which in re­al­i­ty shows that of­fi­cers are sim­ply try­ing to im­prove a dri­ver’s be­hav­iour and alert­ness on the na­tion’s roads.”

Mean­while, Ar­rive Alive’s pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field said sup­port for rel­a­tives of those who died in ac­ci­dents re­mains un­wa­ver­ing from her or­gan­i­sa­tion and all those who sup­port the cause.

“We want all the fam­i­lies who have lost loved ones to know that we re­mem­ber you, we are here to sup­port you, we are here to ad­vo­cate for your sup­port and care, we are here to ad­vo­cate for safer dri­vers, safer roads and safer ve­hi­cles in mem­o­ry of the vic­tims, our loved one who have been in­jured and who have died on our na­tion’s roads,” she said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored