There are 436,000 vehicles registered in the north, ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli said on Wednesday.
Speaking to Kibris Postasi TV, he said around 3,000 new vehicles are being registered in the north every month, and that this is one of the contributing factors to the growing number of serious and fatal road traffic accidents taking place in the north.
He added that the leading causes of those accidents are currently people speeding, people driving under the influence of alcohol, and people driving while using their mobile phones.
These issues, he said, are particularly prevalent among students who come to the north from overseas. He said they often rent cars and “drive them dangerously and operate illegal taxis”.
With this point, he was also keen to stress that those who travel to the north as tourists are, for the most part, “driving carefully”.
He added that soon, those who rent cars in the north will be given information booklets prepared by his ‘ministry’, which will be available in Turkish, English, and Russian.
Arikli’s comments come after Cyprus Turkish chamber of mechanical engineers (KTMMO) chairman Ayer Yarkiner had warned last month that the rate of fatalities on the north’s roads is “six times the European Union average”.
He added that the north’s fatality rate is also three times that of Turkey and noted that while the north’s unclear population statistics may impact the figures, “measures must be taken to prevent an increase in the number of deaths.
“If traffic has remained so primitive and unsafe, it is because we have been in a death sleep on this issue since 1974,” he said, adding that the authorities should devise strategies and plans with the goal of there being “zero loss of life”.
He said ideas could include speed limits being determined according to vehicle classes, “because the severity of collisions increases and the ability to slow down decreases as the mass of vehicles increases.”
He also pointed out that the road between Kythrea and Kyrenia, known as the “mountain road”, is “not symmetrical”, and as such the lines painted on it are “wrong and need to be corrected”.
The mountain road is infamous among Turkish Cypriot motorists, with frequent accidents occurring on it, often involving heavy goods vehicles. Most recently, a man lost his life on Tuesday when a lorry collided with a pickup truck.
