Let the picture speak

WHAT more horrendous carnage must sully our highways than Monday's five-death smash-up for the authorities to take effective action against the reckless speed-demons on our roads? This newspaper has argued, ad nauseam, that appealing to the "good sense" of drivers to be careful and considerate on the road is like throwing water on a duck's back. Indiscipline, the obsession with speed, the total disregard for other road users have become so habitual and perverse among so many of the country's motorists that only the most relentless and forceful campaign against these dangerous law-breakers will now suffice.

It is time to deal in the harshest possible way with drivers who, by their wanton recklessness, endanger not only their own safety but also the lives of their passengers and other users of the road. The problem is, we have called for such vigorous action before. Our roads and highways have become perilous places for the majority as a result of the uncaring insanity of the minority who carry on because the effort at enforcing our traffic laws has always been a sporadic, piecemeal and largely ineffective affair. For some inexplicable reason, those responsible have never risen to the challenge of the road hogs, launching a sustained nation-wide campaign that sends a no-nonsense message.

Yet, as the mutilation mounted, we have been regaled by all kinds of earnest intentions. We have had promises of increased road patrols and action to deal with speeding and irresponsible drivers, greater vigilance, surveillance, deterrence and prosecution. But law-abiding drivers are yet to see that level of implementation and enforcement on our roads. Indeed, a patrol car on our highways is still something rarely seen. Trinidad and Tobago may well have as high a ratio of automobiles per capita as any of the developed countries but, at the same time, we have one of the worst systems or agencies for maintaining and enforcing law and order on the roads.

So the slaughter continues, unabated. On Monday five persons, including three Venezuelan students, were crushed to death when a six-wheel dump truck catapulted over the median dividing the Churchill Roosevelt Highway at the Mausica intersection and overturned on two cars, turning them into mangled wreckage. We are told that the truck ran into difficulties when it attempted to stop behind a car which had pulled up when the lights turned red. In attempting to veer off, the truck went hurtling over the median. The circumstances of this crash and the horrible wreckage of the vehicles involved tells us clearly that, again, the problem was speed.

It has not been our policy to publish the dead bodies of accident victims lying on the road, but in this case we did it deliberately on our front page in order to shock the country and the authorities into realizing the level of recklessness on our roads, particularly the insane obsession with speed, and the agonising calamity it often causes. For this reason, we make no apologies for carrying the grisly picture which, we expect, should be worth more than a million words in telling the story of neglect and expressing the urgency for powerful and relentless action to restore law and order on our roads and highways. As we have said before, in no other area of our national life does the indiscipline of our society manifest itself more habitually and disastrously. The reason for that is the perception among drivers that they can break the law and get away with it and, on the other hand, an apparent feeling by the authorities that traffic offences are minor breaches which do not call for strong enforcement. Will Monday's mutilation make a difference, change anything?