Paray: I will feel safe at 100 km/h

UNC Mayaro MP Rushton Paray said he would feel safe being driven at an increased speed limit of 100 km/h.

He made the comments while contributing to debate on The Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2017 in the Lower House on Friday night.

He said there had been a conversation among young people in his constituency and his peers about why they should raise the speed limit from 80 km/h to 100 km/h. He also said some believed the increase would create more road carnage, fatalities and accidents if they allowed people to drive faster.

Paray said he wanted someone on the Government side, possibly Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan, to explain how they arrived at the speed limit of 100 km/h though he believed the technocrats would have done their work.

“Why not 120 or 140? What makes 100 the sweet spot for drivers?” he asked.

He said, at first, he did not agree with the bill until he read a study on the effects of lowering and raising the speed limit done by the US Department of Transportation. He reported the study found an increase in speed limit did not create a corresponding increase in vehicle speeds.

Paray said for the majority of motorists on the highways the increase of 20 km/h would not create an overwhelming amount of recklessness because the research said there would be very little variation in how fast they drove.

He predicted there would be a vast reduction in the amount of traffic fines as drivers would tend to drive between the variation of the old and new speed limits and be well within the law.

“I am pretty much convinced, I...will be safe on the nation’s highways.”

Paray said one of things he had been championing for many years was decentralisation, and the country had not had a true opportunity to do that. He said with 100,000 cars in traffic for five and a half hours a day for 240 days a year meant this country was losing 144 million man hours.

“That has a definite impact with how we do our business here.”

He said there was nothing preventing the decentralisation of government services to rural communities.