Alcohol, speed, main reason for road carnage

As he expressed concern over the carnage on the roads, Works Ministry Franklyn Khan said the statistics showed the two biggest contributors to road deaths continued to be alcohol and speeding. Speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference at White Hall, Khan said Government would keep its promise to bring the Breathalyser Bill to Parliament before the end of the year. He said a greater police presence on the roads could have only limited impact. “I mean if five young guys want to jump in a car drunk and drink hard going to Maracas, it leaves you very limited options, except having 24-hour policing on the roads,” he said. Khan said the ministry’s Traffic Management Branch was about to start a major education exercise. “We will be going to communities and lecturing on road safety. We will be going to schools, hopefully to make people more conscious of road safety and issues therein,” he said.

He said only last week Government completed the “cat-eying” of the entire length of the Priority Bus Route, which had made a “tremendous impact” on road safety. He said this programme would continue over most of the major roads. Khan said the ministry also wanted to accelerate signage, paintings and markings “to make the road more user-friendly.” He said there is more legislation to come later relating to speed and the use of camera and laser technology. He said suppliers came to Trinidad and Tobago “in droves” trying to sell hardware which this country did not have the legislative framework to use. He was making this claim based on an examination by the ministry and the mobile traffic police of the statistics. He said the dualling of Churchill Roosevelt is currently at the Central Tenders Board. This would definitely start in the fourth quarter of this year, he said.