CHARLES KONG SOO

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said a new U-Turn sys­tem will be in­tro­duced in ear­ly Jan­u­ary to help curb law­less­ness on the na­tion’s roads.

Sinanan, who was speak­ing at Ar­rive Alive’s Sol­i­dar­i­ty Walk and Ride in com­mem­o­ra­tion of World Day of Re­mem­brance for Road Traf­fic Vic­tims yes­ter­day, said the sys­tem will “rev­o­lu­tionise the way we deal with the road vi­o­la­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He ex­plained: “It’s a ma­jor break­through. It’s not just about tak­ing away peo­ple’s dri­ving per­mits, it’s about re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing them. It’s about teach­ing them. If you lose your dri­ver’s per­mit, based on the num­ber of points, you need to go in­to some sort of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and on­ly when we’re sat­is­fied that you un­der­stand the im­por­tance of earn­ing and hav­ing a dri­ver’s per­mit, on­ly then you would be able to get it back.”

Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field said with lives at stake the or­gan­i­sa­tion will not com­pro­mise or ac­cept medi­oc­rity. She said 105 lives were lost in road traf­fic ac­ci­dents this year and there were count­less in­juries which can’t be tracked.

In­gle­field said it was ob­vi­ous and im­per­a­tive that cit­i­zens col­lec­tive­ly worked hard­er to avoid the se­ri­ous col­li­sions that take the lives of so many sud­den­ly and vi­o­lent­ly . The on­ly ac­cept­able fig­ure for road fa­tal­i­ties is ze­ro, she said.

She added that road net­works and fur­ni­ture must be de­signed, con­struct­ed and main­tained to far bet­ter stan­dards. She al­so called for the im­por­ta­tion of safer and clean­er ve­hi­cles.

Yes­ter­day’s event was at­tend­ed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, for­mer na­tion­al cy­clist Michael Phillips and BHP Bil­li­ton TT pres­i­dent Vin­cent Pereira.