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It's time to get serious about highway safety
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August 8th, 2007 issue

Another sunny summer weekend, another deadly string of traffic accidents.

Probably the most horrific: A bus of Austrian tourists headed for the medieval town of Český Krumlov ran off the road Aug. 3 and overturned, injuring 23 people, seven of them seriously.
July was filled with carnage on the roads. Close to 90 people were killed in the first three weeks of the month, compared to 73 people in all of July 2006, according to statistics from the traffic police. The total for the entire year is equally grim: Almost three people per day died in traffic accidents, a total of 1,063. Another 28,114 people were injured.
Police told The Prague Post recently that they’re going to start a graphic information/marketing campaign to scare drivers into behaving better. They plan to show TV spots with victims getting cut out of cars.
We think that’s a good start. But much more is needed to make the highways in this country safe.
More than 4.1 million cars now negotiate Czech roads annually, the highest number ever. All those drivers compete for space with buses, many of which can’t pass safety inspections (see story, page A1), giant trucks and speeding motorcycles.
Speeding causes the most accidents, according to police. If that’s true, it should be easy enough to monitor the highways and start giving out more speeding tickets.
Another common hazard is cars parked close to the road. Of the four that we saw on a recent weekend drive, only one appeared to have a flat tire. The others were parked haphazardly on narrow shoulders, with the occupants standing so close to the road that cars had to swerve to avoid hitting them.
Another major problem is the poor state of road repair. It’s not uncommon to be traveling on a highway that abruptly ends, with four or six lanes of traffic suddenly jammed into two, and drivers trying to figure out where they’re going on unmarked secondary roads. Money from a maintenance plan for bridges was recently funneled into new highway construction, but as the U.S. state of Minnesota learned last week, that’s not necessarily a good idea.
Motorists in this country are scrupulous about abstaining from drinking and driving — which makes it even more difficult to understand why they drive so recklessly when they’re sober. Whatever the reason, it’s clear the same level of conscientiousness needs to be applied to everyday driving.
Police introduced a new points system in July 2006, wherein drivers lose their licenses if they rack up 12 points from driving infractions. It seemed to have an initial effect, but the highway fatalities soon crept back up. The points system needs to be maintained and aggressively enforced.
Along with the new marketing campaign, there should also be safety inspections of vehicles and more money allocated for fixing problem roads and bridges.
Attacking the problem from all sides and stepping up enforcement will make things safer for everyone.


Other articles in Opinion (8/08/2007):

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