President of Arrive Alive Sharon Inglefield says while there has been a 12 per cent decrease in the number of road deaths in 2015, the fact that more older people were dying on the roads is a cause for concern.
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian on Wednesday, Inglefield said the statistics had changed since last year.
“At one stage, the age demographic for road fatalities was mainly between 17 and 35 years but it changed to the early 40s from last year.
Although there was a 12 per cent decrease in road deaths of 145 fatalities in 2015 compared to 165 deaths in 2014, the lowest number of road deaths in ten years, there were still too many people dying on the nation's roads.”
She said there were four major contributing factors to accidents in T&T—speeding, drinking and driving, fatigue, and cellphone use.
She said the group was appealing to all drivers to be responsible, not be distracted, and not to speed or drink and drive.
Inglefield said because of the efforts of the media, defensive driving and road safety were kept on the front burner.
She said police officers also played a major role in reducing the number of road accidents and deaths by being more diligent and proactive, raking in some $43 million in fines for ticketable violations such as not wearing seat belts, tail light infractions, and arrestable offences such as drinking and driving in 2015.
Inglefield said she hoped driver’s education, which includes defensive driving, risk management, time management, and driving skills, would soon be included by the Ministry of Education in the school curriculum.
She said what was vitally important was that it formed part of the licensing process prior to a driver being granted a driver's licence.
Inglefield said if the licensing examination was revamped to include risk, time and anger management, such as was done in first world countries like Sweden and England that had the best road safety track record in the world, we would reduce the number of serious fatalities and collisions on T&T's roads.
Inglefield said citizens, licensing officers and driving instructors needed to be trained to teach good behaviour from the start. Taking the corruption out of the licensing system was of paramount importance, she said.
She said, however, that defensive driving and road safety comprised only part of the vital elements.
According to Inglefield, the police needed to be out on the road, especially between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays when most of the serious collisions occurred, ticketing and arresting people who were breaking the law, whether it was for "bad parking," a broken tail light or drinking and driving.
She said the more enforcement there was, the more people would learn that the police have adopted a no-tolerance approach to road safety.
Inglefield said these measures were not just for Carnival where lots of people were attending fetes and drinking alcohol, since there were more fatalities during the rainy season than the festivities. She said this increase was attributable to speeding.
20 per cent rise in pedestrian deaths
Even though there were fewer road deaths overall for 2015, Supt Mathura Singh of the T&T Police Service’s Traffic and Highway Patrol Branch said there was a 20 per cent increase in pedestrian deaths—47 in 2015 compared to 39 deaths in 2014.
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian on Thursday, Singh asked that pedestrians wear some sort of reflective clothing at nights so that motorists could see them better, to not run across the road or highway, nor dash across behind vehicles, corners or dark areas. Instead, they should cross safely at well-lit areas, walkovers and pedestrian crossings.
The T&T Police Service together with four NGOs launched the Safe Roads initiative in December, which was aimed at keeping motorists, passengers and pedestrians safe throughout the Christmas period into Carnival. The mandate was to step up patrols on “hot days and hot nights” of traffic activity.
Representing the various organisations were president of Arrive Alive, Sharon Inglefield; Douglas Mayers, of the Copyright Organisation of T&T (Cott); Shirlane Hendrickson, assistant general secretary of the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians Organisation (Tuco); Stacy Clarke, of the T&T Beverage Alcohol Alliance; and Supt Mathura Singh of the Police Service Traffic and Highway Patrol Branch.
He said along with increasing and stepping up its patrols, the police service was requesting from police officers that on their second day off and on off days they give an additional four hours to patrol duty.
Singh said apart from that, the police service had trained additional DUI technicians to test drivers’ alcohol levels. Singh said additional officers were trained and were being deployed on the streets. He said they were also looking at the times when fetes finished so as to deploy the DUI technicians outside the venues to conduct breathalyser testing.
He said this was done so people who knew they were going to drive could test themselves and see if they were over the limit. Singh said officers would tell people who were over the limit to stop drinking, mellow out until they were ready to go or get another designated driver.
Singh said this was separate from the DUI Task Force which had four units administering tests in the East, Aranguez, Central and South.
On the acquisition of speed or lidar (light detection and ranging) guns he said there were 20 officers already trained to use that equipment and the service was just waiting on ministerial sign-off to approve them so that they could deploy them.
Singh said the service was urging motorists to abide with all the traffic laws, to comply with the speed limit, watch the walk signs where pedestrians crossed and not to drink and drive.
He said the service was not telling people that they could not drink, but just do not drive after overconsumption. Singh advised that one should have a designated driver, fete in groups and hire a maxi where one driver could take everybody home safely.
Driver behaviour causes 85 per cent of collisions
Over 85 per cent of collisions are a result of driver behaviour.
This was revealed by DriveWise T&T managing director and founder, Rodney Ragbir.
Some examples of poor driver behaviour are driving under the influence/fatigue, inattention or distractive driving, speeding, improper actions and techniques, texting and using the cellphone while driving.
He was speaking to the Sunday Guardian about his company's innovative simulation programme that educates drivers on the perils of distracted and unsafe driving, at 150 BWIA Boulevard, Golden Grove Road, Piarco.
Ragbir said driver behaviour was directly related to driver attitudes, but these could be improved through continual training, knowledge and education.
Ragbir said 100 per cent of the collisions that had occurred in T&T could have been prevented with DriveWise's six star approach which was really effective.
He said the company’s product and training were well received and effective because they got to the root of the problem and addressed it.
Ragbir said in Canada, DriveWise helped reduce collisions by up to 45 per cent, and helped train the police, fire department, ambulance service, and military.