The latest NSO statistics on traffic accidents and deaths for the period 2000 to 2018 show that there have been on average almost 15,000 accidents a year since 2013, with the years 2015, 2016 and 2017 recording at least 42 accidents a day.
Since 2013, almost 9,000 people have suffered injuries in traffic accidents – a rate of almost five a day. During the same period, there have been a total of 82 deaths on our roads, an average of 16 each year.
As the president of a newly formed NGO, Ray Gatt of Doctors for Road Safety has put it starkly: “2016 was a record year with 23 fatalities. They have a disastrous knock-on effect on families and society. Couple these with the hundreds of serious injuries – with associated permanent physical disabilities – and thousands of minor injuries. Each group results in the loss of millions of man-hours of work and dependence on social benefits.” Traffic-related accidents are one of the major burdens of modern Malta.
The reasons for this are manifold. Clearly, the number of cars on the road is an important factor, with about 50,000 vehicles having been added to Malta’s roads in the last four years. The road infrastructure – now belatedly being energetically tackled by the government with a huge injection of EU infrastructure funding and a booming economy – is poor and this exacerbates the situation.
The majority of Maltese roads remain badly designed and laid out, poorly marked (with paint which fades within a few weeks). Transport Malta is placing greater emphasis on improving major junctions and danger spots and the removal of blind spots. But it will take several years before they can be completely improved. Meanwhile, they will continue to spell danger for badly disciplined, discourteous and impatient Maltese drivers.
And this is the crux of the issue. Gatt put it bluntly: “Road safety is the joint responsibility of many stakeholders, among them the road user or the driver. This entails a combination of knowledge of road traffic regulations, self-discipline to observe those regulations, but – foremost – respect and courtesy to others who share the road.”
He noted that culturally the Maltese are strong learners, but quickly forget the rules they have learnt. There is a lack of what he called “the common understanding of acceptable behaviour” on Maltese roads. An easy example of this is that all road users know how to use indicators, and certainly used them when they took their driving test.
However, the prevalent Maltese “common understanding” is that it is not important to indicate when one is driving. But when the statistics indicate so starkly that the number of accidents, injuries and fatalities are on the increase, this attitude stops being a quirky Maltese cultural habit and verges on the criminal.
Traffic-related accidents are one of the major burdens of modern Malta
The five pillars of road safety are: the construction of safer roads; the imposition of safer speeds to align with the road conditions; safer vehicles; safer drivers; and stricter enforcement and driver education.
Of these, encouraging safer drivers is paramount. As the European Commission put it in one of its periodic safe-driving campaigns: “The road user is the first link in the safety chain and the one most prone to error. Whatever the technical measures in place, the effectiveness of road safety policy depends ultimately on users’ behaviour.”
The driver is the key to safer driving. Driving back and forth on our roads in cars of varying mechanical condition are thousands of fallible, absent-minded human beings, some with poor eyesight or slow reactions, and others of varying skills at judging speed and distance. It is a tribute to the human animal that total carnage does not ensue.
I recall a few years ago when Peter Ripard, probably Malta’s foremost adviser to Transport Malta on road safety, spoke passionately about improving the overall level of driver training and testing – which is the essence to the basis of safe driving – with a particular emphasis on an improved assessment strategy for driving instructors.
This should include continuous personal development for both instructors and examiners, with the emphasis on the quality of training. It would be designed to produce safe drivers for life, not merely drivers competent enough to pass their driving test. Instructors themselves should know how to teach and not just put a learner behind the wheel without also giving them basic information about possible hazards.
I often follow learner-drivers on the road and it is not always an impressive sight. Instilling greater courtesy on the road in the learner-driver clearly comes low on the list of priorities. The driver is being taught the mechanics of driving a car, but he is not being taught to have regard for other road users: where to position oneself on the road not to slow other drivers; indicating early enough before turning; driving at a speed consistent with the road conditions. All this should be down to the quality and training of the driving instructor, and I am not convinced it is at present.
It is noteworthy that when European-wide statistics are examined showing the number of driver fatalities in different countries, the countries with the safest roads are Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. What marks out these countries when one drives in them is the unvarying courtesy of the drivers and their patience.
Contrast this with the way Maltese drivers rarely signal, drive in the wrong lane, cut in haphazardly without warning, tailgate, drive too slowly or too fast for the road conditions and fail to dip their lights at night. To show courtesy appears to be treated as a sign of weakness.
Finally, Malta’s Achille’s heel. Better road discipline and behaviour have to be learnt the hard way through strict enforcement of the law. Drivers are ignoring traffic regulations because they know that the risk of getting caught is low.
As Doctors for Road Safety have said: when it comes to road safety, the need for zero-tolerance of infringements has to start immediately. “Road users who decide to break the rules are doing so with impunity.”
It is imperative that law enforcement should be rigorously applied by the Police, Transport Malta and the Lesa warden service.