Richard?Lord

Speed guns are to be in­tro­duced on T&T's roads and high­ways on Mon­day in an at­tempt to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the in­ci­dence of fa­tal­i­ties, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds told a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

The speed guns, a de­vice used by po­lice to mea­sure the speed of mov­ing ve­hi­cles, will be in ef­fect af­ter the le­gal or­der is gazetted on Mon­day.

Hinds and se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers are ap­peal­ing to mo­torists to dri­ve with­in the 80 kilo­me­tres per hour (kph) speed lim­it on the high­ways and 50 kph on main roads to avoid be­ing ar­rest­ed and fined.

Hinds spoke about the ini­tia­tive at his Lon­don Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day.

The speed guns will be able to take a pic­ture and have the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion avail­able to present to the of­fend­ing dri­ver in­stant­ly. If the of­fend­ing dri­ver re­fus­es to stop at that point he will be stopped by po­lice of­fi­cers at a near­by lo­ca­tion. The rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion will be emailed to the sec­ond of­fi­cer for pre­sen­ta­tion to the of­fend­ing dri­ver. A fine of $1,000 is the penal­ty for the tick­et­ed of­fence.

Hinds said speed­ing was the cause of 55 per cent of the ac­ci­dents on the na­tion's roads, adding that Cab­i­net on Thurs­day ap­proved the in­tro­duc­tion of the de­vices.

Hinds was ex­pect­ed to sign the or­der yes­ter­day. He said once the or­der is pub­lished on Mon­day, it will go in­to ef­fect and po­lice of­fi­cers were be­ing en­cour­aged to im­ple­ment it with "full force." Hinds said many of the ac­ci­dents re­sult­ed from "bad be­hav­iour" by mo­torists and they can be pre­vent­ed.

"The law, as of Mon­day, will per­mit the po­lice to use these speed-mea­sur­ing de­vices to man­age bad be­hav­iour and ex­ces­sive dri­ving on our na­tions roads," the min­is­ter said. He called on cit­i­zens not to be ir­re­spon­si­ble on the roads this week­end, adding that the speed-mea­sur­ing de­vices were "a check and bal­ance on bad dri­ving" along the roads.

Hinds said po­lice of­fi­cers were "ad­e­quate­ly and suit­ably trained" to use the de­vices and they will en­force the law "with full force."

He said weak or non-ex­is­tent law en­force­ment was a ma­jor cause of some of the na­tion's prob­lems and urged the po­lice to re­dou­ble their ef­forts to en­force the law.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion, Hinds said he was not aware of any pub­lic out­cry over the ex­ist­ing speed lim­it.

Ear­li­er, Hinds in­di­cat­ed that there was a lot of "bad be­hav­iour" on the roads and mo­torists must now change that be­cause ac­ci­dents are pre­ventable.

The new de­vice is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure dri­vers who ex­ceed the speed lim­it will be cap­tured by a cam­era and in­ter­cept­ed by of­fi­cers.

Road safe­ty non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Ar­rive Alive has been call­ing for this de­vice to be in­tro­duced in this coun­try. Yes­ter­day Pres­i­dent of the group, Sharon In­gle­field, was un­avail­able for com­ment when the T&T Guardian at­tempt­ed to reach her but at a road safe­ty con­fer­ence last week the group re­leased sta­tis­tics that in­di­cat­ed in 2015, there were 127 fa­tal road ac­ci­dents in which 146 per­sons lost their lives. Thir­ty two per cent of these be­longed to the 24-35 age group; 88 per cent were males while 12 per cent were fe­male.

Speed­ing was the rea­son be­hind 55 per cent of all fa­tal ac­ci­dents, while al­co­hol was re­spon­si­ble for 30 per cent of fa­tal ac­ci­dents.

Un­der the new sys­tem dri­vers caught dri­ving over the lim­it will be giv­en a tick­et with ev­i­dence to sup­port the charge.

Hinds ad­vised that mo­torists should not use this week­end to be tak­en as a free for all to speed on the na­tion's roads.

Ac­cord­ing to Hinds, sta­tis­tics ob­tained at one speed trap at an uniden­ti­fied lo­ca­tion in the coun­try showed that when the lim­it was set at 80 kilo­me­tres miles per hour, more than 500 peo­ple were in vi­o­la­tion.

Hinds said he has not heard any pub­lic call for the 80 kph lim­it to be in­creased but if it is raised it will be giv­en the re­quired con­sid­er­a­tion.