Following a series of articles concerning traffic fatalities in Malta and international statistics, I decided to look into the matter from a different angle.
To put the way I am reacting into its proper perspective, please note that I have lived over 40 years of my life away from Malta. I only returned to live here three years ago. Before that, I lived in Amsterdam, Malmoe, Stockholm, Paris and Brussels. I also have experience of Wiesbaden and Frankfurt.
If there were to be the same intensity of deaths caused by traffic accidents in any of the smaller cities I have experience of such as Malmoe, Wiesbaden, Stockholm, Brussels or Amsterdam as we are experiencing in Malta this year, there would have been an uproar among citizens and local politicians. Heads would roll, things would change. Speed limits and traffic controls would be installed and fines increased and enforced.
We have had over 20 deaths on our roads in 2016 already and there is still a month to go.
I see no enforcement of existing speed limits, nor new reduced speed limits to 30 in all built-up areas, 20 in town cores for example. I see no traffic infringement controls even when policemen stand at roundabouts, like the Kappara Junction marked 30km an hour, where all cars pass by making 50 or more. Many drivers on their mobiles and not an eyelid bats!
The statistics that compare cities, including Malta, show that for 2014 the following applied: Vienna 12 deaths per million; Berlin 15 deaths per million;
Stockholm 16 deaths per million; Bremen 18 deaths per million (similar to Wiesbaden); Dusseldorf 22 deaths per million (similar to Frankfurt); Malta 24 deaths per million; South Sweden 29 deaths per million (this includes Malmoe).
Thus in 2014 Malta compared reasonably well with the cities I knew. In fact the press, dinner conversations and radio and TV rarely brought up the subject. The total deaths in 2014 in Malta were 10 (24 per million). This year in 2016 they are 22, more than double.
Malta still compares quite well when a whole country is compared with it, with all their motorways and transit traffic. But it should compare itself with similar sized conglomerations like cities with similar traffic intensity, and then the picture darkens. We are really bad, I must admit.
If we translate the number of deaths this year in Malta and add just one more to the 22 unfortunate and useless deaths, the total for 2016 will be 23. If this is translated to deaths per million, it would amount to 53 (Malta’s population in 2016 is 431,000. 23 x 1,000,000/431,000= 53).
This is why we now talk, write, cry and wring our hands about this terrible state of affairs. We have now bounced completely out of the statistical table. We are no longer equivalent to cities of our size, which have a mixture of inner city roads with speed limits of 30km to 50km and a few ring roads or arterial feeder roads with limits of 50km to 70km or sometimes 90km just like we have in Malta.
They have stayed around the 15 to 20 deaths per million or even tended to go downwards as they install more and more 30km or 20km speed limits and enforce them both for safety, noise and environmental reasons.
We have gone berserk, we are out of control with little hope in sight. Very few cities or countries have this level of deaths per year. Sicily was at 51 deaths per million in 2010 and improved to 41 per million in 2014.
Were Malmoe or Wiesbaden to suddenly have 50 deaths per million, mayors would lose their jobs, chiefs of police taken to task and action would be taken. But they do not go in that direction because the citizens care and understand.