25 June 2007

The war on the roads

In a tiny village, Annico in the province of Cremona, two mothers and their children have been mown down on the pedestrian crossing.
An infant of 6 months was saved because the baby carriage was pushed away by the mother before she was knocked down. Carla Maria and Fiorenza aged not much more than 30 years, Sara aged 11 years are dead because of a motorcyclist who will now answer to the Justice system.
In Italy there’s an absence of a culture of road safety. Yesterday it happened in Annico, tomorrow it’ll be elsewhere, every day people die on the roads.
Cyclists and pedestrians are killed in the big cities, a fact that is by now accepted as though it is inevitable.
To tighten up the laws and for the law enforcement agencies to operate more controls, is possible and must be done
These actions however will not be useful unless at the same time there is a raised awareness at a national level of the massacre that is happening on our roads.
Thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of injured people every year are a national emergency that must be tackled with determination.
On this point, as Minister of Infrastructure, I will act as a promoter of a joint body on road safety with the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Education, the vehicle producers and the media.
However, my Ministry is already putting in place a series of measures to reduce roads accidents and I will keep you informed of these on the blog.
Among these are to tell Anas and the motorway concessionaires to ensure that the road surface has self-draining asphalt so as to give better visibility when it’s raining and thus reduce accidents.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Society