On Thursday morning, commuters on their way to work from the South had to deviate around most of the centre of Malta, arriving more than an hour late for work.

Apparently, the massive traffic jam was caused by an accident near the Addolorata Cemetery and this led to tail-ends on most of the important junctions around there. People had to cross over to Luqa, then to Zebbug, then to Mosta to get anywhere near Sliema and St Julian’s.

One must consider that school has not restarted yet, so what will happen later on this month when school re-opens and maybe there will be one of those morning downpours which gets people using all their cars to take the children to school?

In the case of traffic management in the South-Central part of Malta, the closure of Dock 7 has immensely affected the traffic viability of the entire South. All traffic heading to Valletta or the centre of Malta or crossing over to Sliema etc has to pass basically through two main roads, two main roundabouts which feed into each other.

Apparently, we were saying, this massive traffic jam was caused by one single accident. That shows how the traffic situation is getting worse, how fragile it is and how near total gridlock we are.

This is making driving in Malta so stressful and we as a nation are reacting very badly to it. We are having innumerable cases of total anarchy on our roads. The wardens are there to check on parking. The police many times are nowhere.

And the roads are badly built, certainly not built to sustain this kind of stress. Now, at long last, we are building better roads but it will take us many lifetimes to at least rebuild our main roads and to make them safe. Remember how many people have died on the Coast Road? To our knowledge there has not been any accident in the redone part ever since it was redone.

More urgent than newer and better roads, we must get sanity back to driving. If one were to draw up a list of the worst offenders on the roads, one must somehow include taxi drivers (especially the white ones), delivery vans or trucks, slow drivers on the outside lane and those 20-somethings driving the latest SUVs along narrow roads.

If the government were to send people with a camera filming those who turn this way or that without any indication, it will probably get enough money to re-tarmac many roads.

Obviously, this will not solve the basic problem of an island with too many cars all of which may decide to go to one particular place at the same time. Public transport has improved but it can only drive at the same speed as the rest of the traffic. The most fundamental decisions are still there waiting to be taken.