This week Transport Minister Chris Bonett announced that the first proposals for the Road Safety Bureau will – finally – be presented in the coming weeks.
This is an entity which was meant to be operational by the end of 2023 at the suggestion of a government document which was issued in April 2023 – after Malta experienced a record 26 deaths on its roads in 2022, the equivalent of a death every two weeks.
The idea of the Road Safety Bureau was to investigate accidents on Malta’s roads and identify shortcomings and patterns so that issues can be addressed to make Malta’s roads safer for everyone on them.
Yet the deadline came and went, and then another 12 months passed, and then two more people died on Malta’s roads at the start of another year – and it was only then that the Transport Minister announced that, at long last, there was some progress to be registered.
Since the Bureau was meant to be set up, 13 people died in traffic incidents in 2024 and another 2 have already died in 2025. Not to mention countless other accidents where people have been left with injuries, some of which may leave lasting marks both physically and mentally.
Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that the Road Safety Bureau will be set up in the next few weeks though: what will be revealed are the “first ideas”, and Bonett said that certain changes to the law need to be made with discussions going on with two different ministries to this end.
Everybody who follows current affairs knows that government processes are not exactly efficient to begin with, let alone when one has three separate ministries in talks to reach a solution or agreement on how to do things.
One only hopes that for this – a matter of public safety – the government displays the same efficiency and haste as Robert Abela and Justice Minister Jonathan Attard have displayed with their proposed Bill to change Malta’s laws so ministers and top government officials can be protected from criminal investigation.
The government has been remarkably quick in getting this reform into Parliament – perhaps because it and its ministers may have plenty to lose should citizens have the right to seek investigations into them, like they do now.
By contrast, over a year and 15 road deaths after the Road Safety Bureau was meant to be established, only now are we getting promises of the first titbits of the process.
Sure – it’s better late than never. But the question must be asked: how many of the 15 deaths that we had in 2024 and so far this year could have been prevented had the Road Safety Bureau existed by the time it was promised to exist? And how many road deaths –sadly – still to come could have been prevented if lessons had been taken from those in the past?
Hopefully those responsible for this reform have it in their mind that the longer this process takes, the higher risk there is that it will cost lives.