The Po­lice Ser­vice is once again mak­ing an ap­peal to mo­torists to obey all traf­fic reg­u­la­tions and be ex­tra cau­tious on wet roads, es­pe­cial­ly as the Wet Sea­son has of­fi­cial­ly be­gun.

The re­minder comes af­ter a fa­tal ac­ci­dent on Mon­day af­ter­noon which claimed the life of 25-year-old Zachari­ah Gill, a po­lice of­fi­cer who was at­tached to the Port of Spain Guard Unit.

TTPS Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor, Sergeant Brent Bat­son, is ad­mon­ish­ing dri­vers to avoid tak­ing un­nec­es­sary risks and putting oth­ers in dan­ger.

“Please re­mem­ber it is rainy sea­son now,” he re­mind­ed mo­torists.

“You’re go­ing to have to re­duce your speed and in­crease your fol­low­ing dis­tance be­hind oth­er cars, so you have more time to stop. More im­por­tant­ly,” he said, “you would stop the traf­fic be­hind you that might not have seen what­ev­er haz­ard is in front of you."

The TTPS Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor high­light­ed oth­er road safe­ty best prac­tices.

“Dur­ing heavy rain­fall, don’t put on your haz­ard lights. It is ac­tu­al­ly safer to put on your head­lights on low beam to in­crease your vis­i­bil­i­ty,” he ex­plained. “There is no need to put your haz­ard lights on be­cause some­times when you’re chang­ing lanes, oth­er road users won’t know what your in­ten­tions are.”

“It’s al­so very im­por­tant to check your wipers and en­sure they’re func­tion­ing prop­er­ly and can ac­tu­al­ly re­move the wa­ter from your wind­screen, so you would have vis­i­bil­i­ty con­stant­ly even in that chang­ing con­di­tion,” he added.

Sergeant Bat­son says al­though road traf­fic deaths are down by 20 per­cent this year com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2024, that fig­ure is still too high giv­en how eas­i­ly pre­ventable many road traf­fic ac­ci­dents are.