Fast Draw – Traffic Accidents: A Failure Caused By An Incompetent Government

Fast Draw – Traffic Accidents: A Failure Caused By An Incompetent Government

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By Arie Egozi

The government in Israel is responsible for citizens’ death on the road every passing day. This government, and mostly in this context, the ministers for transportation and public safety can talk well but are doing nothing to reduce the casualties.

But what do they care? They’re driving around in their office cars surrounded by bodyguards.

This site deals with homeland security, in technologies and methods to stop terrorism. Israel exports such technologies to the whole world, as well as knowledge. But when the government is involved, the failure is severe.

For every person injured in a terror attack, the whole country rages, but the government just expects this crazy situation on the road to be accepted as predestined. If there is any reason to aspire to having a government with ministers who do more than just talk – the situation on the roads is it.

The police doesn’t have enough manpower, the roads aren’t being covered, more traffic lights cameras are not being installed. In short – the toll rises and ministers do nothing but talk.

Any other country would have established a national investigation committee but here we just keep on counting casualties.

These ministers, who rush to any television interview, even on matters they know nothing about, fail to take care of whatever they are in charge of.

Since the beginning of 2016, the death toll average is a 1 person dead almost every day: Since January 1st, 88 people have already been killed in car accidents. Ten were killed on the first ten days of April, 19 killed throughout March, 33 in February, and 26 in January.

For the past three years, there is  a constant rise in the number of casualties in car accidents. Numbers of the National Road Safety Authority show that in 2012 290 people were killed, in 2013 309 were killed, in 2014 – 319, and in 2015 356 people were killed.

Shmuel Abuhav, CEO of “Or Yarok” (green light), has criticized the government for failing to reach its goal of lowering the number of casualties in car accidents: “The country stated that each year should see fewer people killed, and in the past three years the number only rises. The main reason is a drastic decrease in traffic police cars. The number of traffic policemen also decreased by more than 50% and the budget suffered cuts of over 60% since 2009.”

Abuhav claims that none of the government’s decision have been carried out. The government stated, for example, that 300 cameras are to be installed on the roads, but so far only 100 were installed. “There is a concentration of accidents and casualties on dangerous roads, where more cameras, police cars and officers must be concentrated,” he added. “When the traffic police has no means, then there is one police car for every 100 km of road. This is unparalleled in any of the modern countries Israel presumes to be on level with.”

“The reason isn’t bad luck hovering over the state of Israel. In 2007 the government authorized a national plan to combat traffic accidents with a budget of 550 million NIS a year. In 2016 the budget allocated to that program was only 220 million NIS. Every year it gets lower,” said Or Yarok’s CEO.