The Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) has ground­ed the dri­ver in­volved in a fa­tal ac­ci­dent in Port-of-Spain, pend­ing the out­come of on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The dri­ver, who was on du­ty at the time, will not be as­signed any du­ties un­til in­quiries are com­plete. PTSC con­firmed he has not been sus­pend­ed, as he is re­quired to co­op­er­ate with both in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal probes.

The ac­ci­dent oc­curred ear­ly Wednes­day at the cor­ner of Park and Hen­ry Streets, claim­ing the life of 19-year-old Lysanne Julien. Po­lice re­port­ed that around 3.45 am, Julien was a pas­sen­ger in a Hon­da Vezel trav­el­ling east along Park Street when it col­lid­ed with a bus head­ing north along Hen­ry Street.

The im­pact caused the SUV to lose con­trol, slam in­to a traf­fic light, flip, and land on its left side along the side­walk. Julien was pro­nounced dead at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal around 5 am. The SUV’s dri­ver and three oth­er pas­sen­gers were hos­pi­talised; two re­main in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, while the oth­ers, in­clud­ing the dri­ver, sus­tained mi­nor in­juries.

PTSC said the mat­ter re­mains “un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion” and that it is co­op­er­at­ing ful­ly with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA). The Cor­po­ra­tion has al­so launched its own in­ter­nal re­view “to en­sure a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the cir­cum­stances of the ac­ci­dent and a re­view of its in­ter­nal sys­tems.”

This is the sec­ond fa­tal ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing a PTSC bus in re­cent times. The Cor­po­ra­tion stressed its com­mit­ment to road safe­ty, not­ing it has been re­in­forc­ing mea­sures “through our reg­u­lar dri­ver re­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme” and that Op­er­a­tions Man­agers have “di­rect­ly en­gaged dri­vers in­di­vid­u­al­ly and in groups on the im­por­tance of road safe­ty and vig­i­lance on the na­tion’s roads.”

Fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s ac­ci­dent, PTSC said it has asked po­lice to con­duct “ded­i­cat­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al ses­sions with our dri­vers, fur­ther strength­en­ing our com­mit­ment to safe­ty on the na­tion’s roads.”

Ad­dress­ing pub­lic con­cerns about con­fi­dence in the ser­vice, PTSC in­sist­ed it re­mains com­mit­ted to the high­est stan­dards of safe­ty. “We reaf­firm that bus trans­porta­tion con­tin­ues to be a safe mode of trans­port in T&T,” the Cor­po­ra­tion said, adding it will “con­tin­ue to re­assess all its sys­tems with a view to main­tain­ing the safe­ty of pas­sen­gers and em­ploy­ees.”