Senior reporter
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt
Road safety in T&T has improved over the years but there’s still a long way to go according to Arrive Alive president, Sharon Inglefield.
“I still think we have a long way to go. It’s a work in progress,” she told Guardian Media.
“The WHO puts out a report every three to four years on our progress. We are improving. We did have a 70 per cent reduction in road fatalities and we want that to continue. But as you know, every life lost is one too many because, again, you have a family grieving.”
According to TTPS Road Safety project coordinator, Sgt Brent Batson, there were 35 road fatalities for the year to date. He said for the same period in 2022, there were 42. This equates to a 17 per cent reduction in fatalities so far. He said the top causes of fatalities have always been speeding, driving under the influence and not wearing seatbelts.
Batson told Guardian Media there were some 41,132 tickets administered for the year to date for road traffic violations. These most common infractions, he said, were failure to wear seatbelts, traffic sign violations, using mobile phones while driving, speeding, and driving without insurance. He acknowledged the need for more education to help combat these behaviours, many of which are considered high-risk.
Inglefield shares this view and believes road safety needs to be included in the school curriculum- like in Social Studies.
She proposes that education begin begins from toddlers with how to cross the road safely- by looking both ways at a pedestrian crossing. At primary and secondary school levels, she suggests they be taught about following the rails at pedestrian crossings and changing the behaviour of parents and guardians. As they near Forms four and five, she said they should be taught about the demerit points system and the consequences of speeding and not wearing seatbelts.
“Teaching road safety as part of social studies in school is vital,” she said.
“Arrive Alive, in the meanwhile, is trying to get into three schools a week to teach road safety and we focus on the high-risk schools and we’re trying our best to spread the road safety word.”
She adds there also needs to be engineering interventions from the authorities like barriers and railings.
“We always have people that push the boundaries, which is why we’re calling for barriers and for railings to guide pedestrian traffic to those walkovers because it’s extremely traumatic when a driver hits pedestrians. The pedestrian might have been reckless. In a lot of cases, pedestrians are impaired by drugs or alcohol. We also need to have engineering interventions to protect drivers- an innocent driver who is travelling and the pedestrian running in front of him. Especially at night when he’s wearing dark colours,” she said.
One way to guarantee safety on the nation’s roads, Inglefield said, is to use public transport like buses. She said not only does this remove vehicles from the roads, but these drivers are trained in defensive driving.
“We’re also pleased to see that our PS (in the Ministry of Works and Transport Permanent Secretary) Sonia Francis-Yearwood has gone out to tender for electric buses. We want to see a mass transportation system in the form of buses- modern buses- so that our public trusts our transportation system and can call a bus and know when our buses are on time to go to school, to go to work, so we don’t have to drive everyday. The idea is, the less cars on our roads and the more buses is the fewer fatalities, because it’s really our ‘P’ drivers that are dying more than in our buses or even our heavy vehicles,” she said.
