President of Arrival Alive, Sharon Inglefield, is calling for a review of the speed limit for main roads.
Her renewed advocacy on the matter comes as Trinidad and Tobago records 22 fatalities due to accidents occurring on main roads.
Speaking on today’s edition of CNC3’s The Morning Brew show, Inglefield said motorists need to be more cautious.
“I think we need to decrease that speed limit,” she argues. “We need to make drivers more aware that there is heavy pedestrian traffic on main roads. You have houses, businesses, and schools. In some cases you have hospitals on main roads.”
“We’ve become very driver-centric in that we think we own the roads as drivers,” she observed, noting that other road users have rights too.
“Pedestrians have a right to get to work and back, to get to [a] party and back, to get their children to school and back—safely. They have [that] right.”
And the Arrive Alive president is admonishing pedestrians to be very cautious when attempting to cross roadways.
Inglefield says there is no reason that someone should be attempting to cross a highway, in the wake of a fatal accidental involving a pedestrian in Trincity on Wednesday night.
“It is very frightening,” the Arrive Alive president said. “We have some pedestrians who have that ‘bounce me down’ attitude, [and those] who are distracted on their cellphones.”
“I am asking pedestrians to please be aware that the vehicle doesn’t end up in a hospital—it’s the pedestrian who ends up in a hospital,” she points out.
When it comes to pedestrians crossing highways, Inglefield had this to say:
“We’ve had 17 deaths on the highways. If we include the one in Trinicity—and I’m hopeful that pedestrian did not die—17 deaths on the highways is just crazy.”
For the year so far, Arrive Alive notes there has been a 62 percent increase in pedestrian fatalities on the nation’s roads.
