SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

There was an in­crease in fa­tal road ac­ci­dents last year with 95 deaths com­pared to 69 in 2021, a 38 per cent in­crease. The num­ber of road deaths rose from 75 in 2021 to 95 in 2022, re­flect­ing a 27 per cent in­crease in lives lost.

Those fig­ures were pro­vid­ed by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Richie Sookhai on Wednes­day when he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at a Road Safe­ty Awards func­tion at the min­istry’s head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain.

Sookhai said leg­isla­tive mea­sures are be­ing put in place to en­sure greater road safe­ty.

He praised the 113 awardees com­pris­ing po­lice of­fi­cers, traf­fic war­dens, fire of­fi­cers, li­cens­ing of­fi­cers and am­bu­lance per­son­nel for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion and not­ed the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of traf­fic in­juries and deaths on fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.

The awards were spon­sored by Wood­side En­er­gy.

Among those who at­tend­ed the func­tion were ACP Wayne Mys­tar, Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) road safe­ty project co­or­di­na­tor Brent Bat­son.

“These tragedies do not on­ly cause im­mense per­son­al loss but al­so im­pact our pros­per­i­ty and have so­cial and eco­nom­ic reper­cus­sions. Ex­perts con­sid­er traf­fic ac­ci­dents a se­ri­ous pub­lic health cri­sis, de­mand­ing con­tin­u­ous ac­tion for change,” Sookhai said.

He added that “we re­alise that an even greater im­pact can be achieved by align­ing more close­ly with oth­er stake­hold­ers.”

The min­is­ter said the T&T Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Coun­cil (TTNRSC) which was formed last year has come up with a mul­ti-sec­tor ap­proach to re­duc­ing fa­tal road ac­ci­dents and deaths. The coun­cil’s man­date in re­duc­ing road traf­fic-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents is set­ting quan­ti­ta­tive road safe­ty tar­gets, fi­nal­is­ing the na­tion­al road safe­ty plan, of­fer­ing guid­ance to lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and con­ven­ing con­sul­ta­tion with key stake­hold­ers, he ex­plained.

Sookhai said the min­istry’s Traf­fic Man­age­ment Branch (TMB) has made sig­nif­i­cant progress in im­prov­ing road safe­ty through var­i­ous ini­tia­tives.vT­wo achieve­ments were the in­stal­la­tion of the rum­ble strip in ac­ci­dent-prone ar­eas and in­tro­duc­tion of line laser ma­chines which have en­hanced the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion and ef­fi­cien­cy of ap­ply­ing crit­i­cal road mark­ings in ur­banised ar­eas.

“We have fi­nalised the de­ci­sion to re­place the ca­ble bar­ri­er sys­tem with guardrails on the north-south cor­ri­dor to pre­vent me­di­an crossovers which have been a se­ri­ous con­cern.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Sookhai said, “leg­isla­tive mea­sures are al­so be­ing put in place, in­clud­ing reg­u­la­tions with re­gards to park­ing against the flow of traf­fic and park­ing on pedes­tri­an cross­ings.”

He said the min­istry is al­so pur­su­ing a leg­isla­tive frame­work to im­ple­ment a check­ered band maxi taxi sys­tem, fa­cil­i­tat­ing safer and more ef­fi­cient tran­sit in rur­al ar­eas.

Sookhai al­so re­vealed that the TMB has eval­u­at­ed ten­ders for the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Plan, which fo­cus­es on road safe­ty.

In­gle­field, who de­liv­ered wel­come re­marks, said an im­por­tant as­pect of a first re­spon­der’s work is that they must be pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained and have tools to do their jobs. These tools in­clude mod­ern work­ing fire ten­ders, cal­i­brat­ed breath­a­lyz­ers, more li­dar speed guns and am­bu­lances out­fit­ted to para­medic sta­tus.

With­out ad­dress­ing as­pects of road safe­ty, proac­tive en­force­ment and post-crash re­sponse peo­ple will die, she said.

In­gle­field said it was im­per­a­tive that the TTNRSC’s plan “is not on­ly ap­proved by our Gov­ern­ment but that ad­e­quate im­ple­men­ta­tion and fund­ing are pro­vid­ed and strict time­lines met.”

She said Gov­ern­ment said must en­sure that the plan be­comes a leg­isla­tive frame­work.