Four young people perished on the roads after midnight on Saturday in two separate car crashes. In the first, on the Frenaros-Dherynia road, three young men, aged between 18 and 20, were killed while two were seriously injured. The driver of the other car involved in the collision, was arrested in connection with causing death through thoughtless and dangerous action.
A 20-year-old student from Greece was the victim of the second accident in Nicosia, some three hours later; she was in a car with six other people, while the driver was found to have been five times over the alcohol limit. Last Wednesday an 18-year-old woman from Romania was killed in a crash in Larnaca. The car she was in had been stolen.
The latest deaths bring the number of road fatalities for this year to 43 from 38 crashes, said the head of road safety of the Traffic Department at police headquarters, Giorgos Milis. It is a marked increase on the corresponding period of the previous year during which there were 28 fatalities from 26 collisions. The circumstances of the fatal crashes were being investigated, he said.
Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades spoke about the need for a re-evaluation of the issue of road safety, saying there were big gaps in road safety awareness and in the education of drivers. He also said there was a need for the introduction of road safety awareness lessons at schools, while the ‘traffic offenders’ school should also operate as a road safety awareness school.
Nobody could disagree with the minister about this, but to create greater road safety awareness and to educate the young at school would take a few years and the problem must be addressed now. While the state could increase police presence on the streets at weekends, as the minister proposed as an immediate measure, the only other option are the tough penalties for traffic offenders.
It is scandalous that a few weeks ago, a big majority of deputies in the legislature voted in favour of a law that increased the number of points needed for a suspension of someone’s driving licence from 12 to 16. Chrysanthos Savvides, the deputy proposing the bill which only one deputy voted against, said the change was necessary because of the many traffic enforcement methods that had been introduced and led to the faster accumulation of traffic points on a driving licence.
It did not occur to him, nor the 40 deputies who irresponsibly voted for his bill which comes into force in February, that the increased traffic enforcement methods were imposed to make our roads safer and force drivers to obey traffic rules. Both fatal crashes at the weekend were caused by violations of these rules. But deputies seem to think that giving more leeway to systematic traffic offenders and reckless drivers so they do not have their driving licences taken away would somehow make our roads safer. If this is not encouragement for dangerous driving what is?
This absurdly irresponsible law must be repealed before it comes into force in February, because there is no other way of making road safer than the threat of hefty fines and ultimately the taking away of driving licences.
