Road accidents featured prominently in your newspaper of 30 April.

Your editorial rightly says that the “situation where people drive like maniacs, oblivious to the fact that they are ‘in control’ of a lethal weapon” cannot go on. Sadly, this situation will persist as long as the present attitude to law enforcement in our main roads and residential streets continues. Ignorance reigns also in the context of road design.

Lack of enforcement on moving vehicles on our roads is virtually absent. The only enforcement that takes place is against easy targets such as owners of parked cars and defenceless old age pensioners who can barely afford to pay the exorbitant fines when they get caught without a plastic bag after their little incontinent dogs let them down.

In other words, the name of the game is to make as much money as possible. At the same time there is mayhem on our roads with little or no police presence to act as deterrent to dangerous driving – presumably there is little money to be made there. As mentioned in the editorial, even speed cameras are of little use; these are anyway placed strategically – also with the sole object of making money and not making roads safer.

Then there is the question of road design. In your report about the accident in Attard on page 9, a council employee was asked whether the council was considering traffic calming measures for the road. The council employee is reported as replying that “road markings were freshly repainted” (for the Pope’s benefit!) and that the “road was properly lighted”. This answer betrays a phenomenal lack of awareness of what traffic calming is all about. Road markings do not calm traffic; neither does street lighting.

Unfortunately the car still reigns supreme in Malta and roads are built only for motor traffic. The needs and safety of pedestrians and (dare one say it?) cyclists, who are also legitimate road users, are simply omitted. This council employee is strongly advised to read, for a start, the booklet “Towards a Low Carbon Society – the Nation’s Health, Energy Security and Fossil Fuels” which can be downloaded from http://www.tppi.org.mt/cms/index.php/reports. Reading paragraphs 393 – 410, and especially para. 399, of this booklet might motivate him to seek more in-depth information.

If a more modern approach, based on safety, health and quality of life of all, were to be used in designing our residential streets, many tragic accidents might be avoided. As your editorial says, despite the repeated warnings and the repeated deaths on our roads, we never seem to learn. But nothing will improve as long as easy money remains the sole object of enforcement on our roads.

G. G. Debono

Sliema