Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS Traf­fic and High­way Pa­trol Branch, Road­way Sur­veil­lance Unit, in 2024 TTPS of­fi­cers is­sued 83,152 Fixed Penal­ty No­tices (traf­fic tick­ets) to mo­torists for var­i­ous traf­fic vi­o­la­tions.

The top five vi­o­la­tion cat­e­gories were:

Seat­belt–19,585

Traf­fic Sign–14,472

In­spec­tion–11,986

In­sur­ance–8,179

Mo­bile De­vice Use–8,009

In our coun­try, many cit­i­zens have long treat­ed traf­fic laws as an in­con­ve­nience. We speed be­cause every­one else is speed­ing. If you choose to dri­ve at the speed lim­it, ex­pect oth­er dri­vers to over­take you or “give yuh horn” to move out of their way.

We park where we shouldn’t be­cause “it’s on­ly for a minute”, nev­er mind that we block oth­ers or cre­ate traf­fic.

We talk on our phones while dri­ving be­cause we con­vince our­selves that it is harm­less.

We al­low lit­tle chil­dren to stand up in the back seats and hang out win­dows rather than teach­ing them to sit prop­er­ly and buck­le their seat­belts.

That lack­adaisi­cal at­ti­tude on the roads is now fac­ing a new re­al­i­ty, as T&T re­ceived a New Year “gift”, an in­crease in fines for a wide range of traf­fic of­fences.

The re­sult of our in­dis­ci­pline is re­flect­ed in the sta­tis­tics. In 2024, T&T record­ed 117 fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dents. It is in­ter­est­ing that pedes­tri­ans formed the largest cat­e­go­ry of road user deaths, ac­count­ing for 46 per cent of all road deaths, fol­lowed by dri­vers (30 per cent).

To­ba­go record­ed 13 road fa­tal­i­ties, the high­est num­ber of deaths record­ed there in near­ly a decade (in 2015, 15 peo­ple were killed in traf­fic ac­ci­dents in To­ba­go).

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing that 80 per cent of the to­tal road fa­tal­i­ties in 2024 were males, and fe­male fa­tal­i­ties in­creased from 11 in 2023 to 25 in 2024. The high num­ber of traf­fic tick­ets is­sued last year is a clear in­di­ca­tion of how wide­spread breach­es of traf­fic reg­u­la­tions have be­come.

It is with­in this frame­work that I un­der­stand gov­ern­ment’s ra­tio­nale for the in­crease in traf­fic of­fences.

Dou­bling the penal­ties for speed­ing; dri­vers or pas­sen­gers not wear­ing seat belts; chil­dren not se­cured in ap­proved child re­straints; us­ing a mo­bile phone while dri­ving; dri­ving a ve­hi­cle in de­fec­tive con­di­tion; and im­prop­er over­tak­ing, U-turns, and ob­struc­tion of­fences can be un­der­stood as an at­tempt to re­assert or­der and to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to be more re­spon­si­ble.

The in­creas­es are a clear sign from the Gov­ern­ment that traf­fic laws can­not be op­tion­al. The po­si­tion ap­pears to be that af­ter years of ap­peals, stronger de­ter­rents are now nec­es­sary to force a change in be­hav­iour.

At the same time, I un­der­stand the im­pact of high­er fines on dri­vers and house­holds. For many fam­i­lies, pay­ing a traf­fic tick­et is a di­rect hit on an al­ready stretched bud­get. For low- and mid­dle-in­come house­holds, pay­ing a tick­et can eas­i­ly mean not hav­ing mon­ey to buy gro­ceries and med­ica­tion, post­pon­ing vis­its to the doc­tor and cut­ting back on school sup­plies.

The im­pact would be even more se­vere for those who de­pend on dri­ving to earn a liv­ing, such as taxi dri­vers and de­liv­ery work­ers. In those house­holds a sin­gle fine does not af­fect one in­di­vid­ual alone; it could be­come a fi­nan­cial cri­sis. Fi­nan­cial pun­ish­ment is ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fer­ent­ly ac­cord­ing to one’s in­come lev­el.

Many will say, “If you obey the law, you don’t have any­thing to wor­ry about,” but this is not al­ways true. You just have to meet one po­lice of­fi­cer who is “in a bad mood” or who “is out to get you” to re­alise how quick­ly an or­di­nary in­ter­ac­tion can be­come a cost­ly and stress­ful ex­pe­ri­ence.

The ques­tion is whether law en­force­ment is go­ing to be con­sis­tent or se­lec­tive. Will some divers be fined while oth­ers get through be­cause of ‘who they are’ or ‘who they know’?

Are there reper­cus­sions for law en­force­ment of­fi­cers who abuse their au­thor­i­ty, take bribes, dis­crim­i­nate against cer­tain dri­vers, etc? Will of­fi­cers be pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained to en­force the law with­out hos­til­i­ty and in­tim­i­da­tion?

There is al­so the ques­tion of whether en­force­ment will be ac­com­pa­nied by ed­u­ca­tion and dis­cre­tion, at least in this ini­tial phase of im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Laws can be strict, but they al­so need to be fair. If we do not have fair­ness and trans­paren­cy, then the new fines will re­sult in re­sent­ment rather than re­spect for the law.

In light of the sta­tis­tics, it would be a pos­i­tive out­come if high­er fines could lead to more cau­tious dri­ving, greater com­pli­ance with seat­belt and child re­straint laws and a gen­er­al cul­tur­al shift where dri­vers be­come more re­spon­si­ble on the roads.

One can on­ly hope that over time this will trans­late in­to few­er ac­ci­dents and few­er fa­tal­i­ties. If the new fines force dri­vers to think and act more re­spon­si­bly, then the ben­e­fits to pub­lic safe­ty will be un­de­ni­able.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, our long-stand­ing cul­ture of dis­ci­pline on the roads can­not con­tin­ue unchecked.

Cit­i­zens must obey the law, but the Gov­ern­ment must be fair and trans­par­ent.