The real cost of taking a summer holiday
Friday, 03 September 2010 09:00
TRAFFIC statistics can be viewed in many ways. In Spain, the Director General of Traffic (DGT) only tabulates road deaths that happen on motorways and major roads, not in urban areas. Now that August, the traditional months when more than an estimated 30-million travel around Spain is over, there is good news and bad news plus mixed messages being sent out by the DGT about Road Safety and Speeding. The bad news is that a total of 25 people were killed last weekend from the 23 fatal accidents according to the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT). The good news, if you can call it that, is that the number of accidents recorded since early last year until August 30 has resulted in ‘only’ 174 fatalities, a decrease of 15 percent over the 202 deaths recorded last year. Summer 2010 is shaping up as the lowest accident rate in nearly 50 years. Since 1 July 2010, 350 people have lost their lives on Spanish roads, 30 less than during July and August last year, according to DGT statistics. The accident figures for this summer are the lowest since 1964, when Spain had only two million vehicles compared with 30 million today, and compared to four million drivers versus 25 million in 2010. However, the DGT do not factor for the advance in vehicle design, seat belts, breaking systems, education, driver training or even better road design, in coming up with such sweeping statements! According to the DGT, one of the most frequent causes of fatal accidents is driver distraction. Talking on your mobile, manipulating your Navigation browser or changing a CD while driving, in many cases triggered an accident. According to a U.S. study, simply smoking a cigarette multiplied the risk by 1.5 of having an accident. The DGT has received a lot of criticism from motoring associations and watchdogs in Spain about their Road Safety campaigns stating that the organisation is placing more emphasis on making paying fines an easier thing to do and placing speed cameras on straight and fast stretches of road, rather than dangerous black spots, than making roads safer to drive on! Thus the DGT have stepped up measures against speeding drivers with a special campaign that was launched on 23 August and ran until last Sunday. The DGT will announce this week the final balance of the summer, which has been marked by the alleged strike of 'fallen pens' by agents of the Association of Civil Guard (Traffico) demanding better working conditions and to protest the new system of having to issue specific numbers of fines to motorists to reach their ‘target’ to entitle them to their full monthly wages. This situation meant that in the months of June and July, according to the association, the number of fines was reduced by 50 percent over those two months last year, and that in the first ten days of August they received less than 20,000 complaints from the same period of 2009. Director of Traffic, Pere Navarro, is convinced that "unfortunately, the fines are necessary for the preventive and deterrent effect through sanctions." His opinion is that more fines equal fewer violations and accidents, but he wanted to clarify that “this correlation between sanctions and claims can only be appreciated in time." In other words, sooner or later drivers will become sick and tired of paying fines and will possibly slow down. However, motoring associations say that Navarro is only interested in revenue generation. A case in point is that Traffic chiefs have installed hi-tech speed traps to identify speeding vehicles with foreign plates and to ensure, through all methods open to them, that the fine is paid before they leave Spain! The DGT have installed a number of fixed cameras that send out instant warnings to the nearest police patrol car so they can track down foreign offenders and issue the penalty on the spot. The fines are between £85 and £500 and those who do not want to pay risk having their cars impounded until they do so. It’s been noted that unless one is carrying cash, that often they shall seize the car or follow the owner to a cash point to ensure they have been paid! An estimated one million Britons have property in Spain, mainly on the Costas and many drive UK registered cars. Not surprisingly, three of these cameras have been placed on the Costal roads of the Valencian Community. Traffic authorities hope the new initiative will deter speeding and reduce the number of deaths on Spanish roads. “Excess speed is a contributing factor in a third of all fatal accidents so lives may be saved with these new measures,” a spokesman for the DGT said. However, it should be noted that only a very small percentage of those killed or involved in fatal accidents on Spanish roads involve foreign cars, so this argument by the DGT seems to have little baring from a safety point of view! Plus the DGT seem to have zero statistics to prove that their speed camera campaign has any effect in saving lives at all, although they can prove they raise valuable revenue for the Government!