In his letter ‘The safety of Maltese roads’, (The Sunday Times of Malta, December 18), Karl Soler disputes the contents of a letter, entitled  ‘No outrage over traffic fatalities?’ (December 11) in which John Vassallo had expressed concern about road fatalities in Malta.

The objections raised by Dr Soler are arbitrary and self-serving. He side-stepped important issues and kicked off by blaming our bad roads for our road fatalities. The biggest elephant in the room, lack of enforcement of the law on our roads, was conveniently omitted by Dr Soler.

As to the so-called “fatal flaws” in Dr Vassallo’s letter, the comparison of our road fatalities with those in a number of European cities was questioned by Dr Soler without explanation.

On the other hand, Dr Vassallo’s well-researched letter explained in detail the basis for making such a comparison.

Instead, Dr Soler tried to justify Malta’s existing speed limits. He ignored the fact that urban speed limits of 30 km/h or even 20 km/h are becoming standard in European cities and towns, where they have been shown to reduce fatalities.

Dr Soler’s argument against the role of speed in causing the increase in road fatali­ties in 2016 on the basis that speed limits did not change between 2014 and 2016 is facile and simplistic.

The probability of death in road accidents is dependent on a great many factors in addition to (enforcement of) speed limits. These include, the presence (or absence) of a ‘safety culture’, encouragement of careful driving behaviour through law enforcement, traffic volume, type of road, and even remote factors  as, for instance, national levels of income and efficiency of  emergency services at  crash scenes. A significant element is traffic volume. High traffic volumes, as in Germany, UK and Netherlands, are paradoxically associated with lower road mortality.

These countries do indeed have low road fatality rates. Given Malta’s high volume of traffic, the traffic mortality profile of such countries would also serve as a valid basis for comparison.

As long as we continue to delude ourselves that, to quote Dr Soler, “Malta has the best European statistics for road safety”, we will remain complacent and our police will remain passive in the face of tragic and unnecessary road deaths. Our institutio­nalised judiciary bias in favour of motorists, with derisory penalties routinely awarded to motorists who injure or kill pedestrians, will continue to reinforce the perception that everybody may drive fast or dangerously with impunity.  This is dangerous.

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