Authorities out to kill car speed

With 240,000 motorists and 330,000 vehicles using a restricted area of 316 square kilometres characterised by extensive building sprawl, speed management is “very difficult”, according to a top transport consultant.

Major Peter Ripard, an adviser at Transport Malta, may have been stating the obvious but his comments yesterday highlighted the difficulties facing the authorities when drawing up a speed management policy for Malta’s roads.

“The so-called bypasses no longer bypass anything and have been absorbed into the urban sprawl making it a very difficult situation,” he told a conference of local council representatives, law enforcement agencies and road experts.

The conference was organised by Transport Malta to unveil a consultation exercise on a speed management policy that dealt with speed limits, speed cameras and other traffic management issues.

The only silver lining, Maj. Ripard noted, was the island’s size because it was not necessary to drive fast to get from one location to another. “Speed is not important to arrive quickly because distances are short.”

According to Transport Malta, a road traffic accident happens every 30 minutes and, on average, three people every day receive medical care as a consequence of being involved in a traffic collision.

Jonathan Joslin, a doctor at Mater Dei Hospital’s Emergency Department, said ambulance dispatch records showed that emergency services were called in almost 1,000 cases last year. Nineteen per cent of road accident injuries last year were grievous or fatal.

The worst collisions were those caused by speeding drivers who were drunk, tired or using their mobile phone. “Kill the speed,” he cautioned, while showing an X-ray image of the fractured skull of a 16-year-old passenger involved in a car collision.

The speed management policy tries to establish safe driving speeds for all categories of roads and all vehicle types, make speed limitations “as driver friendly as possible” and facilitate effective enforcement.

Within the constraints of road design and other localised factors, the policy tries to standardise some of the speed limits on arterial and distributor roads and argues for greater use of speed cameras, including mobile cameras and dummy ones.

Motorists will only be allowed to drive at the national speed limit of 80 kph on three stretches of arterial roads: the Mrieħel bypass, part of the St Paul’s Bay bypass and the top stretch of the Mellieħa bypass.

It also proposes the introduction of a point system for all drivers as opposed to the present system where points apply only to new drivers for the first three years.

But Maj. Ripard insisted that proper road design, reasonable speed limits and enforcement had to be accompanied by better training for prospective drivers.

He said driving school instructors “lacked the required skills and knowledge to educate drivers in proper road safety” and were more focused on helping students obtain their driving licence. Driving instructors should also be educated on the higher standards required to make roads safer, he added.

The consultation document is available on Transport Malta’s website and feedback can be given via e-mail to consultations.tm@transport.gov.mt.