Putting money before lives on the road

Road safety has recently featured prominently in the press. The astonishingly lenient sentence passed on a 21-year-old man who hit two young girls in a car driven at 100kph in a built-up area was the subject of two editorials and several press reports in this newspaper.

These two children are lucky to be alive, at such a speed the odds were against them. The lenient sentence was, appropriately, greeted with outrage and condemnation on timesofmalta.com.

It is paradoxical that, while the lenient sentence passed on this man was universally (and rightly) condemned by website commentators, two earlier reports in these pages on proposals to introduce a 30kph speed limit in towns and residential areas (September 29, October 15) elicited a torrent of furious objections – exactly the opposite reaction. Thus we seem to have a paradoxical situation where people demand more severe punishment for those who endanger pedestrians while at the same time resisting any move to impose a speed restriction on the basis of sound evidence. Underlying all this is the simple proven fact that speed kills, likely factors boiling down to stopping distances and pedestrians misjudging the excessive speed of oncoming vehicles where an appropriate speed limit is absent or not enforced.

A 30kph limit has been on the agenda for some time in Europe and is already commonplace in European towns. It is based on irrefutable scientific evidence. All sane traffic legislators should be familiar with the proven fact that 85 per cent of pedestrians will be killed if hit by a car travelling at a speed of 60 kilometres per hour while 45 per cent will be killed at a slower speed of 50kph and only five per cent will die if hit by a vehicle travelling at 30kph.

Most opponents to the proposed 30kph limit on the website shift the blame for road deaths on pedestrians, maintaining that pedestrians “do not conform to the highway code”; others demand that pedestrians should only be allowed to cross at pedestrian crossings, even insisting that they should wait at pedestrian crossings like sheep and only cross in groups so as not to hold traffic up. Most disturbing of all was the contemptuous attitude of some bloggers towards pedestrians – as though these were a subhuman species.

The situation is not helped by Transport Malta, who simply prioritise the flow of motor traffic, totally disregarding the safety and needs of other road users. The recent death of two young girls on the Mrieħel bypass was accepted as an inevitable part of everyday life and soon forgotten. Suggestions of traffic calming on this bypass, possibly in the form of pedestrian crossings with a slightly raised platform, were met with sarcasm and derision on timesofmalta.com. The matter was quietly shelved after futile discussion about a bridge over the bypass (a concession to traffic rather than pedestrians) being too expensive; after all, life is cheap on our roads. Eventually barriers were installed to prevent cars going off the road in case drivers succumb to that peculiarly Maltese disease of “losing control”. The attitude of Transport Malta is typical of the idiotically skewed approach to safety of our traffic authorities which underlines the disregard to pedestrians which road planners have always shown. After all, who cares about pedestrians?

Faced by such accidents and the data from scientific surveys, the question of excessive speed and non-enforcement on our intra-urban roads (something nobody can deny) becomes a public health matter. Yet Transport Malta remains stubbornly in denial about this and about the needs and safety of pedestrians. Our urban streets and roads remain decidedly dangerous, pedestrian-unfriendly and inhuman. Apart from futile attempts at traffic calming with traffic humps here and there, top priority continues to be given to traffic flow – and not to human beings. Transport Malta still clings to the mistaken and ignorant perception that making roads more pedestrian-friendly and well-designed traffic calming might hinder traffic.

It must be recognised that modern cars are faster and more powerful; this places vulnerable road users at greater risk of injury rather than the occupants of cars who are protected by all sorts of modern safety features. It is now accepted by experts that excessive and inappropriate speed is the single most important contributor to urban road fatalities. But Transport Malta persists in the delusion that Malta is an exception when it comes to road safety. The only enforcement considered to be worthwhile is the sort which brings in revenue – such as cunningly placed speed cameras which don’t save lives but just act as cash cows. Putting money before lives is downright irresponsible.