Consultant: Let the Police run Traffic Branch

President of the Trinidad and Tobago Road Safety Council, Stan Huggins, explained that there were two Traffic Management Branches – one with the TT Police Service and the other with the Ministry of Works and Transport.

He complained that no one was synchronising the two branches and suggested that the Branch be handed over to the police as they were the ones “on the ground.” The branch at the Ministry, he added, should be converted to a road safety department. “We are duplicating this thing, we are not getting any where with it, and it is not working because the traffic is in a mess in this country. Traffic brings headaches to our drivers and increases our road carnage situation. We need to streamline this situation to put less stress on our drivers, passengers, and pedestrians... It makes no sense that the people in the Ministry are telling the police what to do when the police are the ones manning the streets.” Huggins called on Transport Minister, Rohan Sinanan, to help the organisation establish good road safety practices through education.

Part of this assistance would be to help the Road Safety Council to set up a home office from which to run road safety programmes.

At the new location, Road Safety Council hopes to install a library so that children could learn proper road safety, arrange to teach road safety programmes in schools, and run programmes at all driving schools so that instructors would be certified under the Road Safety Council. These plans, he said, would require funding from the government. However he stressed that it was important for Government to assist as there had been an average of 200 road fatalities a year since 2000.

He said road safety included education, enforcement and engineering so it was necessary to start with youths as many young people were being killed or damaged in vehicular accidents. In addition, he said, the public was spending too much money on medical bills, traffic tickets, or fixing vehicles, which could have been avoided by obeying road safety guidelines.

“We are saying you can not punish people on the road if you don’t teach them proper road safety.

Doing that is like ripping off the public.” Huggins also requested that “zebra crossing” sings to be changed to “pedestrian crossing” and the slogan “safety first” be placed at each one; that proper signage and pedestrian crossing be installed at all major intersections on the bus route; and that speed limits around schools be drastically reduced.