Too much carnage on TT roads

THE EDITOR: Dr B Chapman Boyd (Newsday letters April 23) is, of course, quite right in visiting the irrelevancies listed by Minister Franklyn Khan in his home cooked (and half baked?) analysis of our traffic problems.

Drive out of Port-of-Spain in the evening and see the motorcycle cops streaming back to their station to clock-out for the day! See them in the morning waving drivers through a green light (we so dotish we “doh know” what a green light means?) Immediately after five persons were killed in a weekend of carnage on the highways (driving into a river....driving into oncoming traffic on a dual carriageway, driving off a straight road and colliding with a lamp-post with the right side of the vehicle....!!) the police are reported as arresting some boys for playing “whappie” under a street light - in a country where we have institutionalise Government-sanctioned gambling!! For sanity’s sake let us have some proper forensic investigations of these fatal accidents and put the blame where it lies - alcohol, drag racing, or a combination of both. Let us get out of this habit of ignoring our serious problems by our practiced pretence that they do not really exist. It is intellectually dishonest and lazy.

Why cannot our analytical Minister of Works and Transport comment on the suggestion that we relieve hundreds of tired, frustrated and frazzled North-South commuters of their daily (and risky) grind by providing a fast, comfortable and convenient Ferry Service so that they can reserve their driving hours for weekend recreation? Why cannot he give his opinion about that topic instead of commenting on “billboards” and “illegal” (?) Access(es) to Highways (why not simply wall them of?) Why not wider and additional Highways? Why not the decades-late traffic intersection at you-know-where? Why not solar panels at major traffic lights to keep them operating power cuts (when, inevitably, one, two or up to seven die as a result)? Why not in fact, something serious and relevant as Dr Chapman Boyd is advocating in place of the usual UNC-PNM political play acting mumbo jumbo.

GEOFF HUDSON
Port-of-Spain