CYPRIOT drivers, and not bad roads, are the main cause of the island’s high traffic accident rate, a road safety expert said yesterday.
“The road network might have some failures and sign posting might need improving, but over and above all the imperfections, drivers are mainly responsible for traffic accidents,” Andreas Papas said.
The retired head of traffic police, now a road safety consultant, said thousands of people used the island’s road network daily and lived a long life without any harm coming to them.
“I believe the government should make improvements [to the road network] but despite all this, drivers’ attitudes have to change. I want to live and so when I drive I’m careful.
Even if I have an accident it won’t be so tragic,” he told the Cyprus Mail.
Papas said a young man had been killed nearly two weeks ago because, despite driving on a straight, well-lit road, he had failed to follow road safety regulations.
“He was driving under the influence, speeding and not wearing a seatbelt,” he said.
The consultant said that had the man been wearing a seatbelt he could very well have survived.
“Drivers make 10 mistakes, are killed on the roads, and then the state is blamed for the sorry state of the roads. Yes, roads are important, but if there are signposts warning you to slow down, that it’s a dangerous road, and indicating the speed limit, and you fall off the cliff, it’s not the road’s fault.”
The former senior officer was referring to police statistics for 2003-2006, which said that of the period’s 376 fatalities, 26 per cent (100 victims) were killed on just 16 specific roads. A large portion of accidents also occurred after nightfall, police said.
Of those 100 victims, 36 were killed on three roads: Paphos-Coral Bay, Polis Chrysochous-Pachiammos and Nicosia-Troodos.
But Papas said drivers could not just point the finger at the roads and expect the government to build more motorways, just so that they could drive carelessly.
“So many people use those roads every day and as long as they follow the Highway Code there are no accidents… The road network is partly to blame, but it is much improved compared to 15 years ago. Car technology is also much improved. What hasn’t changed is drivers’ attitudes and my appeal is to throw the blame on the driver.”
The road safety consultant said the courts were partly to blame for that. He said that had drunk drivers been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, things would be very different now.
“If 10-15 years ago people had been jailed for a few months, even one month, wouldn’t that have been an effective way of changing peoples’ attitudes? Children would have grown up learning not to drink and drive because the penalties would be so high. The law and courts are too lax when it comes to penalties,” he said.
Papas also said that noticeably more accidents and fatalities occurred in residential areas, due to the greater density of traffic on the roads.
“Although theoretically people drive more slowly in towns than on the motorway, seconds and metres can be the end of the world in residential areas,” he said.
The road safety consultant said that driving within towns posed a multitude of potential problems compared to driving on the motorway.
“On the motorway, all you have to remember are three things: keep a safe distance from the car in front, drive on the left and only go into the right lane to overtake and then go back into the left lane, and use your indicator to give drivers behind you sufficient warning that you’re overtaking. If you do those things the chance of having an accident is one in a thousand or a million.”
In towns, however, drivers were more easily distracted or forgetful of motor regulations.
“For instance you’re driving and your mobile phone rings. All it takes is to take your eyes off the road for a second to reach for the phone and for the car in front of you to suddenly stop in order to have an accident…
“Or if in town you forget to indicate until the last minute and then suddenly decide to turn right and indicate on the corner, and at that moment a motorbike rider is trying to overtake because you didn’t indicate on time and so the driver of the bike didn’t know you were going to turn, you’ve just killed a person.”
