Ryan Ba­choo

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has is­sued a stern warn­ing to all mo­torists to strict­ly ad­here to road laws, par­tic­u­lar­ly those re­gard­ing dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol and speed­ing. This comes in light of a trou­bling trend where of­fi­cers have ob­served an in­crease in the num­ber of mo­torists found to be ex­ceed­ing the le­gal al­co­hol lim­it.

Over the past 48 hours, three per­sons were ar­rest­ed for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence, while of­fi­cers were con­duct­ing rou­tine traf­fic stop and search ex­er­cis­es along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, Uri­ah But­ler High­way and the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

The TTPS says it has ob­served a sig­nif­i­cant up­surge in cas­es where mo­torists have been ap­pre­hend­ed for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence. The le­gal blood al­co­hol con­cen­tra­tion (BAC) lim­it in Trinidad and To­ba­go is 35 mi­cro­grams of al­co­hol to 100 mil­li­l­itres of breath. How­ev­er, nu­mer­ous dri­vers have been de­tect­ed far above this thresh­old, en­dan­ger­ing their lives and those of oth­ers on the road.

Trag­i­cal­ly, this spike in drunk dri­ving in­ci­dents has co­in­cid­ed with an in­crease in road traf­fic fa­tal­i­ties in 2024. "The TTPS is deeply con­cerned about the safe­ty of all road users and will be in­ten­si­fy­ing its ef­forts to curb these pre­ventable deaths," a state­ment from the TTPS said on Sun­day.