Oven 2,000 dead in 20 years on the road

OVER 2,100 people have been killed in road accidents in Cyprus over the past 20 years, police chief Panicos Hadjiloizou said yesterday.

He said records also showed that more than 23,000 people had been seriously injured in road accidents between 1977 and 1997.

“The number of people killed in road accidents every year exceeds 100 and the number of serious injuries is between 3,000 and 3,500,” Hadjiloizou said.

Cyprus has the second worst road death rate in Europe.

Hadjiloizou said police would now be using unmarked police cars fitted with speed traps to catch speeding drivers. He said the incognito patrol cars would be driven by uniformed officers and supplied with detachable magnetic flashing roof lights for use when stopping suspected offenders.

The police chief said most serious road accidents were the result of speeding.

The better news, Hadjiloizou said, was that the number of road victims had been reduced by almost 14 per cent last year compared to 1996. One-hundred- and-fifteen people died on the roads last year.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.