With 29 road fa­tal­i­ties for the year so far, the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is work­ing on chang­ing the dri­ving test ques­tions in the reg­u­la­tion ex­am.

“We are seek­ing to change the cur­ricu­lum for class three dri­ver’s li­cences,” Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke said yes­ter­day.

Clarke said the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple ap­ply for that type of per­mit and cit­i­zens have been writ­ing the same ex­ams for close to four decades.

He said this new con­tent of the ex­am, which should be in­tro­duced by the end of 2023, will help al­le­vi­ate a lot of the law­less­ness that hap­pens on the na­tion’s roads.

“For ex­am­ple, we have added more ques­tions in terms of treat­ing with a round­about, we are adding more de­fen­sive-type dri­ving ques­tions with­in the ex­am. We have al­so tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use the ex­am to in­form peo­ple of the new De­mer­it Point Sys­tem. You know, what some of the chal­lenges are,” he said.

Clarke said the di­vi­sion will al­so test peo­ple on what doc­u­ments must al­ways be in the ve­hi­cle.

“We do not want to be stop­ping peo­ple on the road, like in re­cent cas­es, with­out dri­ver’s per­mits and that kind of thing, they must know that that is a re­quire­ment,” he said.

Clarke said the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion will al­so be dis­trib­ut­ing lit­er­a­ture to the pub­lic in­form­ing them about dri­ving safe­ty and how to safe­ly cross the na­tion’s roads.

He said, “We took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it To­ba­go re­cent­ly be­cause of the con­cerns raised by the po­lice of­fi­cers about the high in­crease of fa­tal­i­ties there. We ear­marked that place as high pri­or­i­ty and we is­sued over 800 pieces of lit­er­a­ture even dur­ing the night house-to-house.”

Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Ro­han Sinanan, said all the new roads that are be­ing built will be cod­ed but said they can’t be en­gi­neered for reck­less dri­ving.

“A lot of the ac­ci­dents were hap­pen­ing in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, peo­ple com­ing from maybe par­ties or work,” he said.

He sug­gest­ed that Clarke in­form peo­ple about road rage.

Yes­ter­day, the min­istry al­so launched a new on­line Pro­vi­sion­al Per­mit Sys­tem which fa­cil­i­tates the ap­pli­ca­tion process of ob­tain­ing a learn­er’s per­mit.

“All these young peo­ple who would have been pan­ick­ing are okay. I’m 17 now. I need to go for my per­mit. You can do this the night of your birth­day from home,” Sinanan said.

The sys­tem al­lows ap­pli­cants to sub­mit their da­ta be­fore ver­i­fi­ca­tion and ap­proval.

This can be done at: https://pro­vi­sion­alper­mit.mowt.gov.tt/.

Clarke said with­in the next month, more on­line sys­tems will be de­ployed. These in­clude an on­line ve­hi­cle trans­fer sys­tem, on­line re­new­al of dri­ver’s per­mits and self-ser­vice pay­ment.

“We are al­so look­ing in the new fu­ture to bring the op­por­tu­ni­ty where we can bring on­line book­ing of spe­cial num­bers,” he said.

Sinanan said the goal is to digi­tise the di­vi­sion.