By RHONDOR DOWLAT Sunday, September 6 2009

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Kishawn St Louis, died in an accident....

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ELEVEN children have died in road fatalities for the year. Four were two years and under and three of the four were passengers in a vehicle.

These are the latest statistics of the TT Police Service Traffic Department.

As a police officer of the Traffic Department said: “The loss of one child in an accident is already one too many, so the number of babies killed that we have for the year already is far too ridiculous and adults must be held responsible.”

The latest accident was the death of 11-month Nevi Vionna Ramjit, who was killed in a vehicular crash on August 30. Her mother, Shamilla Lolita, 35, of Nandoo Trace, Woodland also died. She, according to the police at the scene, was not wearing a seat belt and was seated in the front passenger seat of the car.

Baby Nevi was on her mother’s lap, totally unsecured. She did not stand a chance. Upon impact, baby Nevi went flying through the windscreen and fell in the grass at the side of the Solomon Hochoy Highway, in Gasparillo. She was killed instantly.

Would Nevi have survived had she been securely strapped in the back seat of the car? It is the question that should be occupying the thoughts of all parents of babies.

A similar incident had occurred a few months before, on July 1 when two-year-old Keirra Jackie lost her life when a panel van in which she, her sister and their mother were passengers, crashed into two other vehicles on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway in Maloney. Little Keira was thrown through the windscreen and onto the highway where she died.

On March 8, seven-month-old Kishawn St Louis died at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital from a broken neck which he sustained in a car crash. The year 2009 is not the first one that is being marred by the deaths of babies.

In recent years, there were also tragic cases where toddlers and babies lost their lives. On December 6, 2008 23-month-old Justin Ramtahal and his four-month-old cousin, Akela Maraj of St Joseph lost their lives. Justin’s parents Casey Ramtahal, 26, and Roxanne Maraj, 18, were also killed in the accident.

On June 28, 2006, nine-month-old American citizen Michael Khan was injured when the car his father Miguel was driving, crashed into a lamp post off the Churchill Roosevelt Highway near the Mausica intersection. According to reports, Miguel Khan who lives with his family in Maryland, USA, was driving a car in the company of his son Michael and two other relatives when he ran off the eastern side of the highway and struck a lamp post. The occupants were taken to the Arima District Hospital and later transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) in Mt Hope where baby Michael died while receiving treatment.

On April 6, 2004 three-year-old Cameron Lochan and his father Pradeep were killed in a horrific vehicular crash on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway.

Chairman of road safety group Arrive Alive, Kirk Waithe, told Sunday Newsday that there were no laws in Trinidad and Tobago about occupants of a vehicle wearing seat belts while in the back seat of a vehicle. He said that the laws were directed to persons occupying the front seats making it mandatory for them to be secured with seat belts. Waithe also noted that the TT law did not even make mention about children’s safety and how they should be secured in a vehicle. He described the seat belt laws as “weak”.

“We practically have no seat belt laws because what we have now only applies to the front seat. The reason people do what they do and ignore the law is because they are being allowed to do so.”

Waithe said that the TT Police Service lacked infrastructure in every way possible – legislative, administrative and information technology. “I wish I could tell parents out there that every time they are caught with a child not properly secured in a moving vehicle that they would be charged and fined $2,500 and have their license suspended for a three-month period,” he said.

An officer of the Police Traffic Department, who wished not to be identified, supported Waithe’s position and also confirmed that there was no law governing child safety in a vehicle. He added that officers are limited in exercising their power, meaning that they can only stop a motorist if they see that an adult is holding a baby or toddler in his or her lap and advise them otherwise or “at the time order the adult to sit with the child in the back seat of the vehicle before the driver proceeds”.

He, however, added that a driver can be charged with causing endangerment to a minor under the Children’s Act, “that is, if only there is enough evidence by the State to prove in court that the driver was wrong and causing direct danger to the child’s life or acting in negligence that brings danger to a child’s life”.

There are no local statistics regarding the non use of seat belts in accidents. But the following seat belt statistics were recently released in the United States by The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA): In 2008, seat belt use stood at 83 percent, up from 82 percent in 2007. Seat belt use increased to 90 percent on expressways and remained at 80 percent for surface streets.

In states where rear seat belt use was not required in 2008, only 66 percent of adult passengers wore their seat belts while sitting in the backseat. In states where rear seat belt use was required, 85 percent of adult backseat passengers buckled up.

Fifty-five percent of those killed in passenger vehicle occupant crashes in 2008 were not wearing a seat belt. Sixty-four percent of those killed during the night were unrestrained, compared to 45 percent during the day.

The NHTSA also stated that children whose parents do not wear seat belts are far more likely not to wear seat belts. “It’s estimated that only 34 percent of children with unbelted parents wear seat belts, even though children are at a greater risk of injury in the event of a car accident. Children wearing seat belts during a car accident are 71 percent more likely to avoid serious injury,” the body stated.

“Seat belts are the best protection in a car accident. Failure to wear a seat belt contributes to more fatalities than any other single traffic safety-related behaviour. Sixty-three percent of people killed in accidents are not wearing seat belts. Wearing a seat belt is still the single most effective thing we can do to save lives and reduce injuries on America’s roadways,” the NHTSA report added.

Does this not also apply to Trinidad and Tobago?

Data also suggests that education alone is not doing the job with young people, especially males ages 16 to 25 – the age group least likely to buckle up. They simply do not believe they will be injured or killed. Yet they are the nation’s highest-risk drivers, with more drunk driving, more speeding, and more crashes. Neither education nor fear of injury or death is strong enough to motivate this tough-to-reach group.

Speaking with Sunday Newsday, but wishing not to be identified because of emotional and psychological trauma, a survivor of a fatal crash, in which a loved one, a toddler, was killed said that she was still in a state of shock and disbelief and added that up to this day, she is haunted by the child’s death.

“Not one night I would go to sleep and not see that angel’s face before me. I even dream of the child looking straight into my eyes and asking me ‘what I have done’ and ‘why did I allow this to happen’. This is a nightmare I believe is not ever going to end and I know for a fact that I will go down in my grave feeling this guilt,” the bereaved woman said.

“If I can go back in time and do things over on that fateful day I know I will do things differently. Maybe I would have gotten a different vehicle to go in, maybe I would have secured the child in a car seat, just like the Americans do it and you see in movies, maybe I will even wish that my life was taken instead of the child, maybe, maybe, maybe…that is all I think about. My life has changed drastically,” she said.

“I feel like I can just disappear someplace where I am the only one that exists and not see my loved ones, especially knowing that a member is missing, maybe because of my senseless thinking and actions. The only consolation I give myself is that there must be a reason why I survived this crash and why the child had to die and why the accident occurred in the first place and why, and why and why…this is how I am, this is what I have become but I am trusting God, with much prayers and supplications, that time will heal all wounds. I want to live again because I feel like I have died,” the survivor added.

The survivor then pleaded and challenged all motorists, adults and parents to be responsible for their actions and guard the lives of the children because they are the future: “Whatever you do, think about the repercussions for your actions…if you drink and drive with children in the car or others, if you just drive recklessly and lawlessly or even when you drive, don’t just drive for yourself but for every other motorist on the road. Look out for each other, be alert and obey the laws of the land.

“With respect to seat belts, please, please buckle up, be examples to your children. Put on their buckles, get car seats for the babies…please preserve their lives; and by extension, the relevant authorities, please put the necessary legislation in place and enforce existing laws…don’t let our children die and haunt you until your own death.”

Are we listening? Not at all it appears. The day after Nevi’s death and the disagreement over Newsday’s use of her photograph lying dead at the side of the road, a man was seen driving on the dangerous Maracas Bay Road with a baby seated on his lap, its tiny innocent hands gripping the steering wheel.

Whoever believes that baby had any chance of survival in an accident is as ignorant as those who were appalled at the sight of a dead baby, more concerned with sensitivities than ensuring that a living child is securely protected in a car seat or by a seat belt in the back seat of a car.