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 26, 2025

Arrive Alive honours 85 first responders

by

News Desk
1529 days ago
20210518

NGO Ar­rive Alive has ho­n­oured 85 first re­spon­ders and ser­vice men and women, as well as oth­er road safe­ty pro­fes­sion­als in T&T.

The vir­tu­al Road Safe­ty Awards cer­e­mo­ny took place yes­ter­day, with Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field com­mend­ing the of­fi­cers for work­ing tire­less­ly to re­duce the car­nage on the na­tion’s road­ways.

In­gle­field said road ac­ci­dents have been re­duced by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 53 per cent dur­ing the Decade of Ac­tion for Road Safe­ty 2010 to 2020.

She praised the work of the Gov­ern­ment for its en­act­ment of new leg­is­la­tion like the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem where many dri­vers are re-ed­u­cat­ed via a Dri­vers Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme and taught anger man­age­ment, jour­ney man­age­ment and road rules at a two-day work­shop.

A re­lease quot­ed her as say­ing: “We com­mend Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Joanne Archie and Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Wayne Mys­tar and their re­spec­tive teams for their con­tin­u­ous ef­forts and hard work. Your ser­vice to this coun­try has not gone un­recog­nised.”

Dur­ing Glob­al Road Safe­ty Week, ob­served on May 17 to May 21, In­gle­field said Ar­rive Alive will join a host of glob­al NGOs to call for a re­duc­tion in speed.

She said, “The theme ‘#Love 30 cam­paign’ calls on the Gov­ern­ment to ful­fil the com­mit­ment in the Stock­holm De­c­la­ra­tion by in­clud­ing pro­vi­sion for a de­fault speed lim­it of 30 km/h in built up ar­eas. Our road users de­serve the right to safe and re­spon­si­ble us­age of the roads, what­ev­er the pur­pose.”

She al­so ap­pealed to pedes­tri­ans to be re­spon­si­ble on the na­tion’s road­ways and stop at­tempt­ing to cross the high­ways and utilise the walkovers.

Michael Stone, coun­try man­ag­er, BHP T&T, the main spon­sor, said oc­ca­sions like these are im­por­tant as it al­lows for the recog­ni­tion and cel­e­bra­tion of our road safe­ty jour­ney.

“We have the high­est re­gards for our hard­work­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, li­cens­ing of­fi­cers and traf­fic war­dens—each day you en­sure our dri­vers and pas­sen­gers, cy­clists and pedes­tri­ans are kept safe through en­force­ment of road traf­fic laws in­clud­ing the laws of dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence and speed­ing. We deeply ap­pre­ci­ate your ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty and com­mit­ment to sav­ing lives,” Stone said.

Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Ad­min­is­tra­tion) Joanne Archie, who stood in for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, not­ed there con­tin­ues to be a lack of ad­her­ence to us­ing seat belts.

She said there has been a not­ed in­crease in fa­tal ac­ci­dents be­tween the hours of 6 pm and 6 am.

“While there was a cor­re­spond­ing de­crease in fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dents of 28 per cent be­tween 2019 and 2020. The da­ta will jus­ti­fy the need for more night­time en­force­ment of the road traf­fic laws by of­fi­cers,” she said.

Archie al­so ac­knowl­edged that 78 per cent of last year’s road fa­tal­i­ties were men and be­hav­iour­al change is need­ed es­pe­cial­ly for male dri­vers who let the need for speed get to their heads.

She said, “Men of­ten re­mark ar­ro­gant­ly that women are bad dri­vers, but the da­ta sug­gests oth­er­wise.”

Fea­ture speak­er, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said it is his hope that for the Decade of Ac­tion for Road Safe­ty 2021-2030, road traf­fic deaths will be re­duced by at least 50 per cent and spe­cial em­pha­sis will be placed on low­er­ing that sta­tis­tics for peo­ple in vul­ner­a­ble groups.

Some 38 peo­ple from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, 12 fire of­fi­cers, sev­en per­sons from Glob­al Med­ical Re­sponse T&T, three of­fi­cers from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and 25 of­fi­cers from Po­lice Ser­vice were all recog­nised for their out­stand­ing work in road safe­ty.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored