Joshua Sur­tees

Mem­bers of Trinidad's cy­cling com­mu­ni­ty have launched an or­gan­i­sa­tion called Share The Road T&T in trib­ute to for­mer na­tion­al cy­cling cham­pi­on and coach Clin­ton Grant who was killed on the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way in March.

At a meet­ing at­tend­ed by 150 cy­clists and mem­bers of the T&T Road­run­ners Club at Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, in Port-of-Spain, on May 28, board mem­bers spoke pas­sion­ate­ly about the need to ed­u­cate mo­torists, en­cour­age bet­ter road use from cy­clists and cre­ate a safe zone in Ch­aguara­mas where peo­ple can ride with­out fear of ac­ci­dents.

Scott Fab­res, a se­nior mem­ber of Team SR cy­cling club, kicked off the meet­ing say­ing, "We're here be­cause we have a prob­lem on our roads. At the mo­ment, you put on your cy­cling shoes, go out and you could get knocked down. We want to get on the road like every­body else and see some sort of law and or­der in place."Grant was 42 years old when he died. He had been train­ing a younger cy­clist, Rosan­na Abra­ham, when they were hit by a ve­hi­cle which had drift­ed in­to the shoul­der lane.

Fab­res and oth­er mem­bers of the cy­cling com­mu­ni­ty were at Grant's fu­ner­al."We shouldn't have had to at­tend his fu­ner­al," Fab­res said. "Clin­ton was do­ing what he loved."The sit­u­a­tion, Fab­res says, has reached cri­sis point."If we ac­cept it, the chances are we will be go­ing to more fu­ner­als," he said, be­fore re­peat­ing what the priest at Grant's fu­ner­al had said–"change will not come from those in au­thor­i­ty but from all of us here to­day."

"If we wait for the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Trans­port and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice it's not go­ing to hap­pen," Fab­res said. He re­vealed that the group is work­ing with the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty to cre­ate a "safe zone," and that Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Nizam Baksh had agreed to in­stall light­ing at the cir­cuit at Samaan Park Golf Club to in­crease safe­ty for night rides.

"We are preach­ing to the con­vert­ed," Bri­an Ibrahim, own­er of Fit­ness Cen­tre gyms and founder of Team SR, told the meet­ing. "but how do we reach oth­ers?'"Word of mouth is the best way," he said, be­fore adding that he had gone through some self-re­flec­tion fol­low­ing Grant's death."I'm start­ing with me," said Ibrahim. "I no longer an­swer my phone when dri­ving and I don't text. We've all done it, don't lie. Start by chang­ing your­selves."

Shel­don Wait­he, an­oth­er Team SR rid­er and Grant's best friend said they would be cam­paign­ing to adapt the dri­ving test to in­clude cy­clist aware­ness like in oth­er coun­tries.There are sev­er­al cy­cling clubs in T&T. Knights rides round the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in large groups while SR ridse in Ch­aguara­mas. Both clubs do longer week­end rides with be­tween 25 and 50 rid­ers.

"We don't feel safe at all," Wait­he told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view. "Most cy­clists will tell you every time they go out to ride there's ei­ther an ac­ci­dent or a close call. In small­er groups or so­lo you're at even greater risk be­cause you're a lot less vis­i­ble.""We want to al­so look at our­selves as a fra­ter­ni­ty and en­cour­age our mem­bers to ride prop­er­ly, we have to be diplo­mat­ic about the sit­u­a­tion," he said.

Road rules

Speak­ing about prob­lems en­coun­tered on the roads, he said: "We have a road car­nage prob­lem gen­er­al­ly with speed­ing, lights be­ing bro­ken, cars com­ing up one-way streets. For cy­cling specif­i­cal­ly the prob­lem is two-fold–mo­torists are not aware of cy­clists' rights to use the roads and they're not aware of best prac­tice when they do en­counter them on the road."Wait­he cit­ed the "three-foot rule" when over­tak­ing as an ex­am­ple of the kind of prac­tice car dri­vers are gen­er­al­ly ig­no­rant of.

He said there is al­so hos­til­i­ty from dri­vers to cy­clists, say­ing "in places like Lon­don there has been aware­ness raised."In coun­tries like Italy, Bel­gium, Hol­land these things are em­bed­ded in their cul­ture and they have laws to back them up. If you hit a cy­clist you are pre­sumed guilty un­til you can prove your­self in­no­cent."

Share The Road TT has been found­ed as a reg­is­tered com­pa­ny and is in the process it­self in­to com­mit­tees. It is urg­ing all cy­clists, run­ners and road users to vol­un­teer to help.