Carisa Lee

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Road Safe­ty Coun­cil Stan Hug­gins be­lieves the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port erred when it im­ple­ment­ed the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem in May last year.

Hug­gins said the pub­lic should have been prop­er­ly ed­u­cat­ed on road traf­fic reg­u­la­tions be­fore this was done

“Any school teacher would tell you that if I don’t show you the atrau­mat­ic I can’t pun­ish you,” he said.

“What we do we pun­ish­ing with­out ed­u­ca­tion,” he added.

The De­mer­it Points Sys­tem was cre­at­ed to track the be­hav­iour of dri­vers by the al­lo­ca­tion of points to their dri­ving records.

Each dri­ver starts at ze­ro but a per­son can ac­cu­mu­late de­mer­it points on their dri­ving per­mit record for breach of cer­tain traf­fic vi­o­la­tions and of­fences such as speed­ing.

Hug­gins said this was an is­sue he raised with the min­istry be­fore the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem start­ed but said he was ig­nored. He al­so crit­i­cised rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers for not speak­ing up soon­er.

“That is why I am say­ing that the dri­ving schools, the Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion should have be­fore all that be­come law should have ap­proached the min­is­ter... they didn’t do it,” he said

“Now they in­to some­thing they don’t know noth­ing about, “he said.

Apart from lack of ed­u­ca­tion for dri­vers he not­ed there are many is­sues with the roads such as poor road mark­ings and sig­nage that should have been rec­ti­fied be­fore the points sys­tem was im­ple­men­ta­tion.

He be­lieves many un­e­d­u­cat­ed dri­vers los­ing their li­cense to this sys­tem.

It’s for these rea­sons, Hug­gins took it up­on him­self to do a train­ing ses­sion with dri­ve in­struc­tors from across the coun­try, he start­ed with Port- of- Spain yes­ter­day.

Hug­gins said there are 150 dri­ving schools in this coun­try and ap­prox­i­mate 35 in the cap­i­tal city.

He said in this coun­try once some­one has their dri­ver’s li­cense for three years and has the ex­pe­ri­ence they can open a school. He be­lieves this can be prob­lem­at­ic.

“An ed­u­cat­ed dri­ver is a bet­ter dri­ver, we bring them here and put them on one page” he said.

Hug­gins said in­struc­tors have to em­pha­size the dan­ger that comes from drunk dri­ving dur­ing ses­sions and teach them road cour­tesy as he be­lieves too many young peo­ple are dy­ing on the na­tions roads.

Last year, 77 road traf­fic ac­ci­dent that left 83 dead.

Dri­ving in­struc­tor for 40 years Yus­suff Ali said he doesn’t be­lieve the Points Sys­tem was pre­ma­ture­ly in­tro­duced to the pub­lic.

He said it’s need­ed, how­ev­er, but points should not be de­duct­ed for some of­fences like speed­ing.

“Some­body might just be above the speed lim­it,” he said.

Last month, TTPS Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor Brent Bat­son said close to 1000 peo­ple were on the verge of los­ing their li­cense while more than 60 al­ready did.

In a three- year pe­ri­od, if a dri­ver has 10 or more of­fences but less that 14 they lose their li­cense for six months.

Four­teen more but less than 20, sus­pen­sion for one year and 20 or more two years.