Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter an uniden­ti­fied man was struck and killed while try­ing to cross the east­bound lane of the Beetham High­way, po­lice are re­port­ing that there has been a 41 per cent de­crease in the num­ber of road traf­fic deaths for the year thus far.

De­spite this de­cline, how­ev­er, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) road safe­ty co­or­di­na­tor, Sgt Brent Bat­son, said that pedes­tri­an deaths con­tin­ue to be a chal­lenge.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Bat­son re­ferred to footage of the ac­ci­dent, which showed the mo­ment of col­li­sion when the man was struck by the dri­ver of a white Nis­san Note as an ex­am­ple of the se­ri­ous con­se­quences of “un­safe, reck­less cross­ing.”

“This can have fa­tal con­se­quences, giv­ing dri­vers lit­tle or no time to re­act safe­ly to mit­i­gate the out­come.

“Pedes­tri­an deaths have ac­count­ed for 54 per cent of road traf­fic fa­tal­i­ties in 2026, which is un­ac­cept­able when peo­ple at­tempt to cross high­ways with 100 km/h speed lim­its with safe cross­ing in­fra­struc­ture close by.”

Bat­son ac­knowl­edged that pro­mot­ing safer road habits for pedes­tri­ans was a chal­lenge, es­pe­cial­ly as many peo­ple were struck and killed.

“Pedes­tri­an deaths con­tin­ue to be a chal­leng­ing risk to man­age, es­pe­cial­ly on the high­ways where many of the in­ci­dents have in­volved peo­ple of no fixed place of abode, which makes tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties for aware­ness in­ter­ven­tions dif­fi­cult.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site of the ac­ci­dent yes­ter­day, sev­er­al work­ers at the near­by in­dus­tri­al es­tate and res­i­dents from neigh­bour­ing ar­eas were seen cross­ing the high­way to get to ei­ther side.

One man who was seen cross­ing the high­way said he did not use the Sea Lots walkover, which is lo­cat­ed sev­er­al me­tres west of the ac­ci­dent site, as it was more con­ve­nient to sim­ply wait for the chance to cross.

“I liv­ing in Pic­ton, so I pre­fer to just stand there and take my time to cross rather than hav­ing to walk out of the way to use the walkover and then walk back up the road. That is about half an hour, and I’m not re­al­ly on that.”

One NP work­er, An­dre Bram­ble, was seen cross­ing the high­way on his way to work.

Speak­ing af­ter reach­ing the oth­er side of the high­way, Bram­ble said he has been mak­ing the same trek across the high­way dur­ing his 21 years of work­ing with NP and has nev­er had any close calls with death.

“I know how to cross here... you can’t just rush, you have to take your time. The cour­tesy kind of lost from some of the dri­vers, but some will still stop for you, while oth­ers will speed up.”

Re­fer­ring to the Sea Lots walkover that was lo­cat­ed a few me­tres down from his work­place, Bram­ble said an­oth­er walkover clos­er to the Sea Lots In­dus­tri­al Es­tate would be wel­come.

Un­til then, he urged pedes­tri­ans not to take their chances by run­ning across the high­way, warn­ing that they could not out­run a car trav­el­ling at top speed.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who asked not to be named, said he was not par­tic­u­lar­ly fear­ful of death as he timed the ve­hi­cles as best as he could.