Transport Department Introduces Measures to Curb Spike in Road Fatalities

The Transport Department is rolling out interventions aimed at reducing road traffic fatalities, following a spike in traffic incident-related deaths over the weekend. As many as nine people died and several others were severely injured in three separate incidents. Chief Transport Officer Leon Gentle offered his condolences to the grieving and pleaded with the public for cooperation as the initiatives, which include increased highway patrols and checkpoints are rolled out. He added that the department is working with partners such as the Police Department and the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing to make the highways safer.

Leon Gentle, Nacional Referee: “The police department along with the Department of Transport wishes to increase its vigilance on the highways conducting patrols and checks and one of the things that I want to establish as well is that majority of these incidents seem to happen when the sun goes down at night. And so we want to increase that patrol during the night. We want to increase those checks during the night and so the Commissioner and I have had several sessions where we had looked at how we can establish some sort of collaborative effort to be able to provide that service during the course of the night. And we are still in the infancy stage but we intend to employ that in the upcoming weeks. Another element of that is because the dynamics of our ministry has to work along with the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing they’re primarily the persons responsible for infrastructure development as it relates to roads and housing. And so it’s important for us to have a collaborative discussion with them to see how we can look at those upgrades and to see how we can increase the lighting in those areas and the markings on the roads.”

Gentle said that a major tool in the fight against traffic fatalities will be greater public education. He said that one of the initiatives being looked at under the Road Safety Project is the establishment of a driving school, which will arm drivers with the knowledge and skills needed to safely use the road.

Leon Gentle, Nacional Referee: “It is important for us as the Department of Transport to also create an element of education. For me I think abiding by the speed limit, ensuring that there is clear vision for you to take over, there is enough space for you to pas the person in front of you that is very important and I want to encourage road users to kind of make that judgment call to be as safe as possible with in that space. There are a couple things the department wishes to employ in the near future. One of which is to identify an area that we can employ a driving school where we use the graduated drivers license as element of education for those who are using the roads. This element itself is in its infancy stage through the road safety project. There are several elements to that initiative the needs to be completed prior to getting to that level of the driving school. But the idea is for us to have a safe driving manual as well as a graduated drivers license through a driving school.”

Gentle said that he hopes that the driving school initiative can be rolled out within the next year.