Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch, Wayne Mys­tar, is strong­ly urg­ing dri­vers to ad­here to the speed lim­it along the na­tion’s high­ways, par­tic­u­lar­ly at night.

This comes af­ter High­way Pa­trol speed teams is­sued 91 fixed penal­ty no­tices to dri­vers over the week­end for ex­ceed­ing road­way speed lim­its, with the high­est be­ing clocked at 178kmh.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the TTPS said en­force­ment ex­er­cis­es were con­duct­ed along the Diego Mar­tin, Churchill Roo­sevelt and Uri­ah But­ler High­ways.

Mys­tar stat­ed, “Speed en­force­ment is a crit­i­cal part of the TTPS’ road polic­ing strat­e­gy aimed to­wards re­duc­ing the num­ber of road traf­fic deaths and se­ri­ous col­li­sions on the na­tion’s roads, es­pe­cial­ly the high­ways which car­ry a high­er speed lim­it of 100kmh.”

He added that “Eighty-nine per cent of our speed vi­o­la­tion de­tec­tions were dur­ing the late night and wee hours of the morn­ing. This reck­less­ness will not be tol­er­at­ed. Speed­ing dri­vers ex­pose both them­selves and oth­er road users to an un­nec­es­sary risk of death and se­ri­ous in­jury and we in­tend to ex­pand our night speed en­force­ment dur­ing the month of De­cem­ber, as part of our ‘safe city’ ini­tia­tive for the hol­i­day sea­son.”

Ac­cord­ing to Snr Supt Mys­tar, there are oth­er fac­tors that con­tribute to ac­ci­dents along the na­tion’s road­ways.

He said the TTPS con­tin­ues to part­ner with all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers, lob­by­ing for re­me­di­al work to both mi­nor and ma­jor roads, which are al­so known to con­tribute to road traf­fic ac­ci­dents.

The state­ment from the TTPS al­so de­tailed that of­fi­cers of the High­way Pa­trol Branch re­spond­ed to a road traf­fic ac­ci­dent along the west­bound lane of the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, St Au­gus­tine which oc­curred around 1.30 am last Sat­ur­day - No­vem­ber 27.

It said up­on ar­rival of­fi­cers found the body of an uniden­ti­fied man ly­ing mo­tion­less on the road­way. The man is of African de­scent, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 55 years of age, dark in com­plex­ion.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion on this hit and run in­ci­dent has been asked to con­tact the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion at 662–4038 or via the 555 re­port­ing hot­line or the TTPS’ App.

The TTPS said this lat­est in­ci­dent brings the cur­rent num­ber of road traf­fic deaths for 2021 to 72, com­pared to 82 for the same pe­ri­od last year.