For­mer Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Dr Jack Austin Warn­er has praised the gov­ern­ment’s 100 per cent in­crease in traf­fic fines, but warned that road safe­ty ef­forts must al­so ad­dress pedes­tri­an be­hav­iour and the road­wor­thi­ness of gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles.

In a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our, Warn­er high­light­ed the grow­ing prob­lem of jay­walk­ing and dis­tract­ed walk­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly among peo­ple on mo­bile phones. He said this be­hav­iour, of­ten ig­nor­ing traf­fic lights and pedes­tri­an cross­ings, puts both pedes­tri­ans and mo­torists at risk. Warn­er called for pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and en­force­ment mea­sures that go be­yond dri­vers, warn­ing that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for safe roads should not rest sole­ly on mo­torists.

Warn­er ac­knowl­edged the bold­ness of Za­k­our’s de­ci­sion to dou­ble fines, not­ing the an­nounce­ment on Christ­mas night might have sur­prised many. “Road car­nage has be­come far too fa­mil­iar. Do­ing noth­ing was not an op­tion,” he wrote, say­ing stronger penal­ties were a nec­es­sary tool to curb law­less­ness on the roads, re­duce fa­tal­i­ties, and con­tribute to pub­lic rev­enue.

Draw­ing on his ex­pe­ri­ence as an el­der­ly dri­ver, Warn­er said he had no­ticed in­creas­ing dis­re­gard for road rules and asked for clar­i­ty on whether gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles meet the same safe­ty and road­wor­thi­ness stan­dards now be­ing ap­plied to pri­vate mo­torists. He specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned ve­hi­cles used by Min­istries, NP tankers, T&TEC, WASA, TSTT, fire ser­vices, po­lice, prison ser­vice, De­fence Force, PTSC bus­es, and oth­er state-owned con­veyances.

“Have these ve­hi­cles been in­spect­ed, will they be in­spect­ed un­der the same stan­dards now be­ing strict­ly en­forced on pri­vate cit­i­zens, if the an­swer is yes, it would be use­ful for the pub­lic to know this, and the like­ly cost to the tax­pay­er, and the time­line for such in­spec­tions, full trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, if the an­swer is no, and I sin­cere­ly hope that will not be the case, then the in­evitable ques­tion must be asked, why not?” he said.

Warn­er said the let­ter was meant to strength­en Za­k­our’s ini­tia­tive, not un­der­mine it. He not­ed that pub­lic con­fi­dence in en­force­ment de­pends on the per­cep­tion that rules ap­ply equal­ly to all, cit­i­zens and gov­ern­ment alike, and said en­force­ment must be com­pre­hen­sive, fair, and cred­i­ble, sup­port­ed by func­tion­ing sys­tems and vis­i­ble ac­count­abil­i­ty.

He added that Za­k­our had shown courage in con­fronting in­dis­ci­pline on the roads, and said that with clear fol­low-through and con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion, the ini­tia­tive could mark a turn­ing point to­ward safer roads and re­stored pub­lic trust. Warn­er thanked the Min­is­ter for his at­ten­tion and wished him for­ti­tude in the de­mand­ing task ahead.