The Po­lice Ser­vice is re­port­ing a 33 per cent re­duc­tion in road traf­fic deaths so far in 2025, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.

The TTPS’ Road Traf­fic Co­or­di­na­tor, Sar­gent Brent Bat­son, says he is pleased with the de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, he told Guardian Me­dia that the Po­lice Ser­vice re­mains con­cerned about the fre­quen­cy of in­ci­dents, re­fer­ring to the most re­cent—Fri­day’s mul­ti-car smash up.

Speak­ing on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show, the TTPS of­fi­cial warned mo­torists to main­tain a prop­er dis­tance from oth­er ve­hi­cles while dri­ving.

“One of the biggest mis­takes any dri­ver can make, es­pe­cial­ly on high­way roads, is fol­low­ing ve­hi­cles too close. The high­er the speed is the more space that ve­hi­cle needs to stop,” Sgt Bat­son ex­plained. “That’s why fol­low­ing dis­tance in­creas­es with speed.”

Ac­cord­ing to TTPS of­fi­cial, a safe dis­tance is con­sid­ered as a fol­low­ing dis­tance that is at least three sec­onds be­hind the ve­hi­cle in front. He says this is the min­i­mum re­ac­tion time a mo­torist will need to stop safe­ly.

“The less space you leave be­tween ve­hi­cles,” he not­ed, “is the less time you are go­ing to have to re­act to some­thing on the high­way.”

And Sgt Bat­son is urg­ing mo­torists to dri­ve re­spon­si­bly dur­ing the Car­ni­val and fete sea­son.

He says all road users need to ex­er­cise sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness both on and off the na­tion’s roads.

“You can­not park in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly. You have to think about when this event is fin­ished, where you ve­hi­cle is go­ing to be. I was just read­ing a re­port of peo­ple hav­ing their ve­hi­cles bro­ken in­to [at an event]. If you can’t get a se­cure park, it might be wis­er to take a rideshare or hire a taxi,” he ad­vised.

He is re­mind­ing the pub­lic that it is prefer­able to en­sure there is ac­cess to se­cure park­ing when rev­ellers go­ing out for Car­ni­val events, rather than tak­ing a chance by park­ing their ve­hi­cles in un­se­cured lo­ca­tions or on the roads, where crim­i­nal op­por­tunists could ei­ther break in­to or make off with them.

Sergeant Bat­son al­so re­vealed that there have been min­i­mal re­ports of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents for the Car­ni­val sea­son, thus far.