Your letter writer last week (‘Germany shows speed is not the killer’) seems to lack knowledge of the terrain of Cyprus.
I am a German, having driven there for more than 30 years, covering thousands of kilometres. I started driving when I was 15 and have been driving for 54 years – both accident and traffic-fine free.
Firstly, a speeding car kills when it is being driven by the wrong person.
These are mostly young new drivers who lack the experience to make sudden decisions when faced with a serious situation or old drivers who have no knowledge of the power of newly manufactured cars.
There are also those who have never sat a driving test but hold a licence and still merrily tour around in their modern cars; law-breakers who telephone while driving and those who urgently need spectacles but are too proud to be seen with “specs” on their noses
Secondly, you cannot compare Cyprus’ roads, either city, trunk and motorways with the road network in Germany.
I won’t bore you by explaining what the German roads are like – it’s enough to say they are wide, mostly straight and with excellently maintained road surfaces. Meanwhile, on Cyprus, the motorways are like scenic-routes, being hilly having numerous bends, some “cambers” on corners are dangerously sloped, sharp and short. Filter roads joining and exiting the motorways are invariably short.
Cyprus has very limited space to road-link towns, cities and villages. In my opinion, if one stays at the recommended speed limit – and much slower when approaching a filter-road – then we all would have a better chance of avoiding an accident.
The sun is almost always in one’s face when driving, as roads are mostly west to east which is an added hazards to drivers. It seems a typical Cypriot statement: “I know the road like the back of my hand, so why slow down?”
Monsieur Djaferis, I have driven numerous times in Lausanne and all of Switzerland, France and Italy. I have used Swiss Autobahns many times, and I had paid my very expensive “vignette”, to use them, but I, like all other road-users, was only allowed to drive at a maximum of 100 kph on Autobahns, with a leeway of a further 10 kph when overtaking a farm truck or similar.
The problem with the promenade road in Limassol, which is used as a race track whenever traffic flow is light, is the biggest! My husband and I sat in a restaurant one afternoon approximately 40m from a traffic light for pedestrian. A sign warning drivers they were approaching a crossing was about 50m before the traffic light.
For one whole minute, I counted the amount of cars which were driving at 60kph and more when passing the warning sign. There were 23 cars who would have been unable to stop had pedestrians been crossing on the green man.
A normal saloon car needs a braking-length of 100 metres when the car is driven at 100kph. Unless, of course, the driver, who is invariably not wearing a seatbelt and talking on his phone, slams his brakes on and flies through his windscreen…
By the way, the pedestrian crossing is the one near the old Ladas fish restaurant – on a popular beach and in an area of many restaurants, hotel and holiday flats.
I would suggest that all drivers wishing to re-new their car insurance policy, be compelled to be given a questionnaire on the highway-code and driving a car. If the applicant does not answer 28 questions correctly, the insurance company should refuse to insure them.
If all Insurance companies did this, it would force drivers to get a book on the Highway Code to seek out the answers and perhaps they would learn from it at the same time.
Diane Best,
Limassol
