We have become accustomed to reading news reports of pedestrians, mostly the aged and children, getting injured or killed on our roads by motor vehicles but nobody seems particularly bothered.

Worse still, reports of pedestrians injured or killed by vehicles often elicit repugnant newspaper blog-site comments implying that the victim was to blame.

A recent letter (January 26) added another facet to the sad picture of Malta’s backwardness in terms of road safety and justice for pedestrian traffic victims. As things now stand, the prospects remain as bad as ever for victims who were seriously injured in road accidents because many of them are still waiting for justice years after the accident. It is as though injury and death on road accidents have come to be accepted as an unavoidable fact of life while the victims or their survivors remain forgotten in a limbo.

Apart from the scandalous delays in reaching court decisions, there are other obstacles which the unfortunate victims have to face.

The first of these is the uncanny bias of the judiciary and police in favour of vehicle drivers. This has gone to the extent of overt victim-blaming in our courts of law. In one instance, a judge was quoted as saying: “The fact alone that a driver was over-speeding did not automatically render him fully responsible. In the circumstances, the (victim) was found to have contributed to the incident by crossing the road carelessly” (October 31).

In another recent case, the magistrate made this astonishing recommendation: “The time has come for pedestrians to shoulder responsibility for their actions... the time has come for pedestrians to also answer for their actions when they are negligent, such as when they do not use zebra crossings and in cases of jaywalking” (October 20).

There are plenty more such examples where our judges and magistrates seem to bend over backward to mitigate the liability of the vehicle driver for damage compensation to vulnerable road users – with mostly lenient penalties being awarded.

Then there is the absence of legal protection for vulnerable road users. Malta and the UK are out of step with the rest of Europe by not operating any form of so-called ‘presumed liability’, thus denying vulnerable road users access to compensation for injuries.

It is often the case that victims of road accidents, especially children and the aged cannot afford the legal fees for making claims for injury or loss of a family member.

It also frequently happens that there are no witnesses to the accident so that the victim remains unable to obtain compensation. The vulnerability of pedestrians on the road warrants extra legal protection for road users.

In continental Europe and many other countries, accident liability regimes in one form or another are seen as an integral factor of road safety which facilitates access to justice for pedestrian road accident victims. The principle which underlies the concept of presumed liability compensation is simple: a driver is voluntarily in charge of a vehicle which is capable of inflicting severe injury or death to all vulnerable road users who are not protected in a vehicle.

There are no grounds for arguing that this legal remedy will constitute a blank cheque for injured pedestrians to claim damages, neither is presumed liability a question of guilt. It is only a question of damage liability.

Similarly, claims that the introduction of presumed liability laws will escalate insurance costs are unfounded; the presumed liability principle leads to fewer accidents by virtue of more cautious driving and claims can only be made for compensation for death or injury. If the driver or his insurance company proves that the victim caused or contributed to the accident, then the claim is reduced accordingly or rejected outright and the legal costs borne by the victim.

This acts as a deterrent to pedestrians making frivolous claims. Contrary to the situation in Malta, in those countries where the presumed liability principle is in force the judicial decision process also tends to favour the victim. This is also essential for ensuring safer roads.

Finally, most accidents occur in the urban setting. Lowering urban speed limits to 30 km/h has been shown to significantly reduce urban road injury and the fatality rate. For this reason, 50 km/h speed limits are now being systematically substituted by 30 km/h speed limits in cities and towns in other countries.

As long as Malta’s institutionalised bias in favour of motorists persists and no provision is made for vulnerable victims to obtain speedy compensation, the perception that everybody may drive fast or dangerously with impunity will continue to be reinforced.

George Debono is a retired doctor with a research background and a special interest in health and environment matters.