POLICE revealed yesterday that so far this year, they had caught a whopping 281 drivers under the age of 17, among them 29 of whom were under 14.
The revelation came after the latest incident in which a 13-year-old boy was nabbed yesterday driving a car in Avgorou with his grandfather, 62 as a passenger.
He was caught when members of the police’s special motorcycle squad spotted him. His grandfather was sitting in the passenger seat.
The incident was made more startling by the fact that it took place during the police’s much publicised Road Safety Week.
Police spokesman, Michalis Katsounotos, expressed his concern at the apparent failure of the traffic police’s messages to reach certain sections of society, since Road Safety Week has focused on informing children.
Both grandfather and grandson were escorted to the police station.
“Both of them were led to the police station where the 62-year-old was charged. The 13-year-old was not legally responsible,” said Katsounotos.
He said so far this year police had seen 281 cases of minors under 17 driving cars and 29 of those were under 14. The youngest of this year’s batch was 12 years old, he said. Last year, in total there were 27 cases involving under 14s.
Katsounotos said the majority of minors are alone when they take out their parents’ cars and only a handful involved adults, either a parent or a sibling.
In response to whether they feel they should also be road safety education parents as well as children, the spokesman said: “We’ve tried so many times but all of our calls seem to fall on deaf ears.”
Parents caught allowing their underage children behind the wheel are charged with allowing an unauthorised person to drive their car.
In October 2010, a father was arrested after he allowed his 11-year-old daughter to drive in the ambulance lane near the highway. The father was sitting in the passenger seat as well as the girl’s underage brother.
Traffic Police head Demetris Demetriou expressed his shock at the time as to how a father could trust his child behind the wheel of a car and he also wondered whether the parents understood the risk posed to the child and to other drivers.
The latest road safety campaign only ended yesterday. At the centre of campaign were children and their proper education in road safety. The event’s motto is “Road Safety…it’s not a game” and targeted children about road safety in a playful manner.
Demetriou said that a big part of the police’s preventive strategy was the training and education of children and young people, because this laid the foundations for changing the country’s mentality towards driving.
“By investing in youth, we are teaching children proper road safety habits, with the hope that they will be carried on into adulthood” said Demetriou at the launch. “This long-term policy constitutes the best measure to prevent fatal road accidents” he said.
