To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The news of the death of box­er Jizelle Sa­landy and the in­juries sus­tained by na­tion­al foot­baller Tama­ra Wat­son on­ly add to a pre­vail­ing sense of tragedy on the roads of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Just a few days be­fore, an au­to­mo­bile crash threat­ened the ca­reers of two of this coun­try's track stars, Richard Thomp­son and Monique Cabral. In the first week of the new year, there are al­ready two fa­tal­i­ties on the books and the loss of Sa­landy, a young box­er with an un­blem­ished record of wins, is par­tic­u­lar­ly painful. The Ar­rive Alive cam­paign has done much to bring the is­sue of road safe­ty back in­to pub­lic dis­course, and to height­en aware­ness of hot-but­ton is­sues like drunk dri­ving.

If, how­ev­er, there is any­thing at all that a trou­bled na­tion can take away from the dis­turb­ing news of the last week, it is the need to dri­ve the mes­sage of care­ful and de­fen­sive dri­ving deep­er in­to the pub­lic psy­che. Among its many warn­ings about crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the UK's For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Of­fice cau­tions: "The stan­dard of dri­ving in Trinidad and To­ba­go is er­rat­ic. Road ac­ci­dents lead­ing to fa­tal­i­ties are a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence." On his blog, Tom Van­der­bilt, au­thor of the book "Traf­fic: Why We Dri­ve the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), not­ed about his vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go in De­cem­ber, 2008: "Ac­cord­ing to Thurs­day's Trinidad Guardian, in a lit­tle box head­lined 'Mr. Death' show­ing an im­age of the Grim Reaper, there have been over 250 (ac­tu­al­ly 226 at that point) road fa­tal­i­ties this year in T&T.

"By just one com­par­i­son, North­ern Ire­land, which this year had one of its safest years ever, has around 120 fa­tal­i­ties–with a pop­u­la­tion some 600,000 larg­er. The rea­sons are not hard to imag­ine: There are many two-lane, non-di­vid­ed high­ways in the coun­try, which peo­ple dri­ve at rou­tine­ly high speeds (life seems re­laxed every­where ex­cept the roads)." The rea­sons for the high in­ci­dence of ac­ci­dents and road fa­tal­i­ties are well known; a cul­ture that en­dors­es speed­ing and a lax ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the rules of the road and the lin­ger­ing machis­mo of drink­ing and dri­ving. The tragedy of Jizelle Sa­landy's pass­ing and the near miss­es that have spared Thomp­son, Cabral and oth­ers who have sur­vived mishaps on the road re­cent­ly, should serve as a cau­tion for the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son, which will run for po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous weeks.

While pre­vi­ous ef­forts at road safe­ty ed­u­ca­tion have been en­thu­si­as­tic and laud­able, re­al changes in na­tion­al at­ti­tudes to road safe­ty will on­ly come when peo­ple start talk­ing to each oth­er about the con­se­quences of dan­ger­ous dri­ving be­hav­iour. Those con­ver­sa­tions need to be­gin among young peo­ple, the sec­tor of so­ci­ety most like­ly to be out late at night, dri­ving fast cars and in a state of di­min­ished judg­ment. Stake­hold­ers in­ter­est­ed in min­imis­ing risk on the road and Gov­ern­ment agen­cies and min­istries with a fo­cus on the young should en­cour­age pop­u­lar young per­son­al­i­ties to make road safe­ty and sound judg­ment when dri­ving in risky sit­u­a­tions part of their con­ver­sa­tions with their au­di­ences, col­leagues and friends.

Young peo­ple with a lead­er­ship role in com­mu­ni­ties, schools and groups should be en­cour­aged to set an ex­am­ple and spread pos­i­tive word of the val­ue of key safe­ty is­sues like des­ig­nat­ed dri­vers, de­fen­sive dri­ving tech­niques and the need to re­spect the safe­ty of pas­sen­gers over mat­ters of ego or style. Through our youth news­pa­per, GIEN­et­work, the Guardian stands ready to play our part in de­liv­er­ing a mes­sage of safe­ty and due dili­gence on the road to young peo­ple vul­ner­a­ble to the temp­ta­tions and en­thu­si­asms of dri­ving dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. A re­duc­tion in the num­ber of peo­ple killed on the na­tion's roads re­quires an all-out na­tion­al ef­fort that touch­es every­one in this so­ci­ety, in or­der to fore­stall the loss and in­jury of valu­able young lives.