INCREASE ROAD PATROLS

There is a clear need for the police to institute adequate road patrols on the country’s heavily trafficked roads, with particular emphasis on the Christmas season, in an effort to stem the rising rate of fatal vehicular accidents. Both the type and frequency of road accidents do not suggest that the police are making a serious effort to deal with the problem of speeding, driving without due care and attention and unsafe vehicles, despite frequent promises of putting effective road patrols in place. Too many road users, some of them innocent bystanders have been killed, seriously injured or traumatised as a result of these accidents.

Many of the accidents could readily have been avoided had the Police Traffic Branch been doing its duty, not only with respect to speeding, reckless driving and defective vehicles, but motorists driving under the influence as well. There are scores of cars and heavy duty vehicles on the road today with defective tyres and brakes and exhaust systems in addition to having non-working stop lights. In turn, cars are driven during official lighting-up hours with only one front light and no working lights to the rear of their vehicles.

Admittedly, the police can do only so much, and more motorists need to adopt defensive driving strategies, including staying within authorised speed limits and refraining from driving vehicles that are unroadworthy. Motorists, who insist on being behind the wheels of vehicles with defective braking systems or which have smooth tyres or worse, tyres so worn that the casing shows, are playing a deadly game of Russian roulette, all too often with other people’s lives. The fact that the vehicles may have been used before without anything untoward happening is not an excuse for gambling with their and the well-being of innocent people. In turn, passengers in taxis, private cars and/or maxis can help by asking reckless drivers of vehicles in which they are travelling, to slow down and to be careful.

It is inexcusable for the police to treat responding to a cluster of fatal road accidents as though they were engaging in a public relations exercise. They make promises, all with an eye to the following day’s headlines, of placing more vehicles on the road to stop the carnage. Should this be done, the additional patrols are withdrawn a few days later or as soon as the public furore dies down. People’s lives, well-being and future are at stake through the cynical indifference of the police, an indifference which only encourages some motorists to break the law through cutting in and out, reckless overtaking and driving on the shoulder of the road once they realise that there are no patrols.

In addition, there are some drivers, who, at night-time, indulge in drag racing around the Queen’s Park Savannah, between Queen’s Royal College and Stollmeyer’s Castle and on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway, among others, as if cocking a snook at the police, even as they endanger the lives of others. We wish to make clear that we are not accusing any specific motorist or motorists of breaking the law through dangerous or careless driving or referring to any particular accident.

The death of someone, however, as a result of a road accident, is not only of immense hurt to the victim’s family, but may rob the country of a promising young adult or student with the capacity to make an immense contribution to the future of Trinidad and Tobago, or of a breadwinner, whose untimely death can hobble a family. With the advent of the festive season and the traditional increase in alcohol consumption at this time of the year, the police need to be particularly vigilant. And when the season is ended to think of making road safety a genuine round-the-year exercise.