Editorial | Sunday, 30 August 2009

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A tragedy foretold

Once again, Malta has been stunned and sobered by the horror of another fatal traffic accident, this time in Zejtun.
Details of this crash – which cost the lives of an entire family: two parents, both in their early 20s, as well as their three-year-old daughter – make for grim and unpleasant reading. But they also illustrate a disturbing fact which is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Driving in Malta (and not just in Zejtun) has of late become a daily dice with death. And when all is said and done, responsibility for this state of affairs lies not so much with any one entity or authority in particular, but rather with a deeply ingrained attitude affecting the country as a whole.
Let’s face it, this is hardly the first time a single tragedy has prompted widespread calls for an overhaul of Malta’s road safety regime. Some years back, three youngsters were killed in an accident while crossing the Mriehel bypass. These deaths elicited demands for protective fencing along that notoriously dangerous thoroughfare, as well as widespread criticism of the authorities’ apparent laxity when dealing with road safety in general.
Four years later, no such fencing has been erected, and the same stretch of road is simply a fatal accident waiting to happen... again.
From this perspective, the Zejtun tragedy is symptomatic of Malta’s traffic problems as a whole... foremost among these is the state of the roads themselves.
Apart from the often appalling surface conditions, it remains a fact that Malta’s are very poorly designed... largely thanks to a misguided philosophy provided by German consultants some 10 years ago.
On the advice of these “experts”, roads which used to be multi-laned – such as the Tal-Balal bypass leading to Naxxar, the Rabat Road as it leaves Attard, and many, many others – have been narrowed to single lanes, with the result that it has become virtually impossible to safely overtake for very long stretches. This in turn prompts impatient drivers to take unnecessary risks at the earliest opportunity – a situation which has not been helped by an unforeseen effect of speed cameras (whereby some drivers suddenly reduce speed to 35kph, and continue at that pace for miles).
It should come as no surprise that, in its reaction to this week’s tragedy, the Zejtun local council identified the width of Anton Buttigieg Avenue as a contributing factor. In fact, the council recommends widening this road to facilitate overtaking: a commonsense proposal, but which nonetheless contradicts the current modus operandis of Malta’s entire traffic management philosophy.
On a separate level, there is also the issue of law enforcement. Unfortunately, it must be said that the introduction of traffic wardens has not had any noticeable impact on road safety. Part of the reason is that wardens are overwhelmingly concerned with only stationary vehicles – issuing tickets to cars parked on double yellow lines, or blocking garages, or which fail to adequately display their road licences on the windscreen, and so on.
None of these contraventions contributes in any significant way to reducing accidents (although they do provide a much-needed revenue stream for ailing local councils, as well as the private companies which employ the wardens to begin with.) Meanwhile, other matters one would expect to concern a “traffic warden” – such as, for instance, “traffic” – are by way of contrast entirely neglected. For instance: when is the last time you saw a traffic warden pulling over a vehicle for overspeeding, dangerous driving, or even driving under the suspected influence of drugs or alcohol?
As things work in practice, breathalysers are by and large used only after an accident has already occurred: making a mockery of the well-known truism that “prevention is better than cure”.
There are several other areas which need to be comprehensively tackled if we are to make Malta’s roads safer in any significant way: sign-posting and road marking are often inadequate, making it difficult a first-time driver to properly ‘read’ the roads. Bicycle lanes are not marked clearly enough, and sometimes placed in all the wrong areas; roundabouts and centre-strips are often mistaken by urban planners for botanical gardens, with serious effects of visibility of oncoming traffic... the list goes on and on.
But these should not be addressed in fits and starts, still less as knee-jerk reactions to tragedies such as this week’s Zejtun accident. What is needed, now more than ever, is the implementation of a comprehensive and properly researched traffic management policy, to address all these issues once and for all.

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EDITORIAL


A tragedy foretold