From the online comments board

Road accident bureau to be set up by December

Investigations by the bureau will not assign blame in traffic accidents

It does not take a bureau to establish that 99 per cent of the accidents are caused by arrogant and ill-mannered drivers! – Charles Micallef

What a load of reactive cobblers! How about appointing competent persons in the relevant transport entities, in the first place? A country riddled with political appointees who have no competence and experience in the tasks they are allocated. The friends of friends, simply let loose upon the public, with devastating and tragic results.

Reminds me of the old cinema series – Carry On! Carry On! If only it was funny. People are getting injured and killed on the streets of Malta with an alarming and an ever increasing regularity. Morru ħalluna. – Chris Agius

Unfortunately, the authorities are run by people who have zero competence and, in the meantime, people continue to die on our roads. Instead of wasting money on more jobs for the boys (biex ikomplu jitħanżru) appoint qualified competent people at Transport Malta. – Claire Grech

Why set up a road accident bureau? Waste of money and resources in my opinion, especially if members will be given big pay cheques. Better spend that money to speed up roadworks, which are often left half done and are a major cause for accidents, impose stricter laws to enforce discipline and also use the funds to educate people to be responsible on the roads.

Aren’t there any government department employees responsible who should be doing their work in analysing accidents and acting upon it too in an attempt to prevent them? – A. Galea

Another useless quango. The amount of vehicles on our roads is unsustainable. We have gone beyond the saturation point. An underground system is the only viable option to alleviate this problem, unless we want to restrict vehicle ownership or driving on alternate days. Flyovers and new roads are only temporary solutions which mitigate traffic for a while. – Mario Pace

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

By 2026, the bureau will conclude that Malta needs to narrow the roads back to two lanes, that e-scooters should be banned, dedicated bus lanes should be reintroduced and roadworks should be coordinated by another ‘bureau’.

Hopefully, by then we will be dead set to kick this party hijacked by a bunch of criminals out of the way. – J. Schembri

It’s about time we started enforcing licence bans for life and prison time for repeat offenders. Most importantly, drivers without insurance must serve time, serious time, five years or more. Useless to appoint bureaus only to add another layer of bureaucracy unless the laws are changed to incorporate harsher penalties. – James Calleja

It does not take an investigative body to realise that most of the fatalities/accidents occur due to negligence from other drivers/road users, use of mobile phones while driving, drivers under the influence of alcohol and drugs and reckless drivers. Setting up another investigative body is a drop in the ocean as it will not be achieving any tangible results but more reports and papers to flick through.

The government should spend the money wisely and invest in more hands-on solutions such as more police on the roads, enforcement and technology that could look into these issues and fine abusers instantly. These are what discourage abusers and not useless paper reports. – Marija Abela

We can have a million agencies and laws. It’s all useless as there is no effective enforcement. – Joe Genovese