THE NEW Year was welcomed with a death. In the early hours of January 1, a 17–year-old boy was the latest victim of reckless driving. He wasn’t even driving, just innocently standing on a pavement. Gone is a split second.
The sad truth is that people have become so accustomed to hearing such stories, that they are rarely deeply affected by them. They don’t change their ways. They don’t become better drivers.
“Mentality,” a traffic policeman at Limassol police headquarters insisted. “This is the problem.”
“People refuse to listen to us… There is only so much we can do,” he added.
But with police shrugging their shoulders in this way, the message gets through to the driving public that, actually, there’s very little the authorities will do to bring them into line.
A traffic warden admitted they were facing an uphill task. He said the police system and its laws were antiquated. “They go back to British colonial times and nobody has bothered to change them.” However, roads, road users and traffic have. There are more people and more cars and the old system is incapable of dealing with it.
Limassol police point to a shortage of staff. “Since accession to the EU, police officers have been posted to cover a much wider range of duties, from the port to outlying country areas, leaving few at the central offices,” the traffic officer said.
“Those of us who are left behind are, however, making efforts to campaign against reckless driving, including visits to schools.”
He said that as part of a police programme, students at the Lanitio School in Limassol have been researching and making presentations on reckless driving and road safety.
Part of the programme also involves showing gruesome accident clips whose sole aim is to shock and make youngsters “Think!” – the logo for the British-made campaign.
“They are shocking and very blunt, but the message comes across very effectively,” he said, expressing regret that police road safety advertisements were only shown on television after a certain time, and those shown in schools were considered too gruesome for television. “Parents complain that they are too graphic for their children to watch,” he added – an irony given the glee with which the channels repeatedly broadcast the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
New Limassol Mayor Andreas Christou believes the advertisements should receive greater exposure and would play a vital role in getting people to wake up and see the harsh reality. He also insisted that “mentality and culture have to change”.
The recent road works with the building of five flyovers to replace the old network of roundabouts have aggravated the problem in the city. But the Mayor insisted that many things had improved in the city and that commuters would soon enjoy a much smoother network. When completed in two years’ time, if all goes according to plan, the flyovers should connect the town and relieve traffic congestion. In the meantime, it is a chaotic situation especially during peak lunchtime hours and evenings.
But why is it that Cypriots are such ghastly drivers? One Limassol driving instructor, who preferred to remain unnamed, emphasised the need for stricter monitoring of driving instructors, “who often themselves break the rules when they are driving”. This would include driving school seminars and monitoring.
But his suggestions received short shrift from the Driving Instructors’ Union, he said, adding they felt threatened by such new ideas.
He said there should be a set number of lessons before someone can take the driving test and the test should be at least 45 minutes long, covering all aspects of driving and driving conditions, “not just 10 minutes round the roundabout”. There is also a need to check standardised test routes, to ensure they are up to scratch and are clear and precise.
Due to the recent road deaths there have been moves to introduce tougher measures by doubling the number of penalty points for people in the first three years of their driving licence. In the UK, licences are automatically taken away for drinking and driving, with a two-year period of probation; if an offence is committed within six months, both lessons and test have to be taken again.
Heading into downtown Limassol at night brings a stark reminder of just how dangerous the roads can be. Full-beam headlights blind the driver trying to pick his way through uneven asphalt, perilous potholes and decaying animal carcasses, while avoiding the high speed antics of road hooligans.
So what is to be done? In 2005, 40 out of 54 motorists killed were not wearing a seat belt. Forty-five per cent of road victims were between 18 and 25. Cyprus breaks records when it comes to stupid driving. It is obvious to all that things have to change quickly.
The police this week set a target to slash traffic deaths by 10 per cent this year, outlining ambitious plans to save lives on the roads. But will police make full use of new powers they are seeking from Parliament? Will they enforce for real, or will they shrug their shoulders at drivers’ indiscipline, complaining “there’s only so much we can do”?
