Smoother roads and junctions may facilitate the flow of traffic, but they also tempt selfish, irresponsible drivers to act carelessly towards other road users and to neglect their own safety. It is inevitable that this behaviour sometimes results in terrible accidents involving loss of life or limb.
It may be argued that the multi-million-euro programme to upgrade Malta’s road network was necessary in view of the ever-rising number of vehicles on the streets. Others would argue that such projects only promote the use of private vehicles. What is certainly true is that the upgrade programme has not been accompanied by a proportionate national effort to also boost road safety.
The latest awful fatality reported was of a motorcyclist just a week before his 43rd birthday, killed in a Gudja crash last week. We do not know the cause of this accident. But as the number of licensed vehicles continues to rise – at the end of last September it stood at 411,056, up from 402,427 at the end of 2020 – so does the potential for more accidents to occur.
The national road safety strategy, published in 2014, had set a 10-year direction for a safer land transport system, the aim being to cut fatalities by half, grievous injuries by a third and slight injuries by a fifth by 2024.
In 2014, there were almost 15,000 accidents that left just under 1,800 injured persons and 10 dead. In the latest official statistics for the whole year, 2020, the number of traffic accidents fell to below 12,000, while just over 1,000 casualties and 12 fatalities were reported. Accidents in the first nine months of last year amounted to nearly 10,500, with the number of injured below 1,000 and five fatalities.
One may or may not find solace in these numbers but one death or one life shattered by permanent injury is one too many. Times of Malta observed nearly a year ago that too many obituaries had been written about road victims. And marble plaques commemorating such tragedies abound.
What we argued then holds now: the road-building spree and the ever-rising number of vehicles demand that a fresh, robust effort be made to ensure road fatalities and serious accidents become a negligible statistic and a rare headline.
Many motorists just drive too fast and furiously. Dangerous and reckless driving is commonplace and indiscipline behind the wheel widespread. Meanwhile, enforcement of traffic regulations leaves a lot to be desired.
Doctors for Road Safety once said: “Road safety is a responsibility of all road users. However, the onus and obligation to take specific actions to improve road safety must rest with those organisations and institutions that are entrusted by the government and society to work diligently and assiduously to protect lives on our roads.”
A traffic safety investigation agency was once on the cards. The plan was for it to become operational in 2020. One of its functions was to be the establishment of the causes and contributing factors of accidents so that safety lessons could be learnt by the transport industry. There seems to have been no more public mention of this agency.
Yet, it would surely make an important contribution to efforts to reduce road accidents, especially if the agency worked closely with all entities involved, including the police, Transport Malta, Infrastructure Malta, the National Road Safety Council and the Malta Insurance Association.
Road fatalities and life-destroying accidents are not just tragic for the victims and excruciating for the families involved, but they are painful for the whole nation. It is time more is done to prevent them.