Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Rel­a­tives of a man killed in a fa­tal road traf­fic ac­ci­dent in Char­lieville on Christ­mas night say they are not con­vinced that a re­cent in­crease in fines for traf­fic of­fences will be enough to im­prove road safe­ty, and they are call­ing for more proac­tive polic­ing.

Po­lice said the body of 40-year-old Sum­raj Bhag­wan­deen was found on a con­crete me­di­an on the Uri­ah But­ler High­way, near Jern­ing­ham Road, around 9 am on Box­ing Day morn­ing.

The pre­vi­ous night, a dri­ver in the area re­port­ed that she may have ac­ci­den­tal­ly struck Bhag­wan­deen, as she told po­lice she re­called see­ing a “shad­ow-like fig­ure” run across the high­way. The woman, how­ev­er, did not see any­body af­ter the im­pact.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives said while the de­ci­sion to raise the penal­ties for traf­fic in­frac­tions has been tout­ed as a step to­wards greater road safe­ty, they did not be­lieve that it would make a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on road safe­ty.

“All these things they fo­cus­ing on, like lights and bub­bles on the win­dow and oil leaks, I just find that’s very un­nec­es­sary,” one fe­male rel­a­tive said.

“I can un­der­stand the speed­ing and the drink­ing and dri­ving, but some are just un­nec­es­sary, I find.”

The rel­a­tives al­so said they were dis­ap­point­ed in how long it took the po­lice to dis­cov­er Bhag­wan­deen’s body, not­ing that hours passed be­tween when the ini­tial re­port was made and when he was even­tu­al­ly found in the gen­er­al area where the col­li­sion hap­pened.

One rel­a­tive said Bhag­wan­deen’s moth­er fell sick af­ter hear­ing the news of his death and was al­so dis­ap­point­ed that his au­top­sy was not per­formed yes­ter­day and was post­poned to next week, which they said fur­ther pro­longed the griev­ing process and pre­vent­ed clo­sure.