A large proportion of people die in road traffic accidents due to non-fined speeding by 20 km/h above the maximum speed limit of 50 km/h in cities, and therefore the provision on the absence of liability for such speeding must be removed from the legislation, insists Oksana Tryndei, head of the public organization "Mothers of Children Affected in Road Accidents," who is the mother of a child killed in a car accident.
"A very large number of those killed specifically in cities falls within this margin of speeding. In particular, in our community, there are several children who died within approximately this speed range. According to all calculations referenced by both the World Health Organization and various other organizations, a speed of 50 is critical. At a speed of 70, practically only 10% of people survive. Is the state really not going to do absolutely anything about this exact speeding, which causes death to a large percentage of people?" Tryndei said during a press conference titled "Mortality on roads is a matter of national security: petition to the president" at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Friday.
Oksana Levytska, chairwoman of the board of the NGO "Zhyttia," noted that there is nothing new in this aspect, and "there are already scientifically proven, time-tested solutions based on the experience of many countries, as well as recommendations from international organizations."
"For road traffic safety, the World Health Organization proposes the following structural pillars. First — speed limits according to the circumstances in which traffic occurs. Second — safe road infrastructure. Third — inevitable effective control. Fourth — information campaigns. Some of them, like information campaigns or safe road infrastructure, require a frequent, long-term commitment, and also extremely large capital investments. If we talk about road infrastructure, it is not even billions, it is tens and hundreds of billions of hryvnias. However, if we talk about speed limits and the inevitable effect of control, this lies within the field of regulation. That is, this is something the parliament and the government can do by making the right decisions," noted Dmytro Kupira, program director of the NGO "Zhyttia."
He emphasized that nowhere except Ukraine and Russia is there "an absurd 20 kilometers that follow from the absence of liability after the permitted speed."
The head of the NGO "Mothers of Children Affected in Road Accidents," as well as the father of a 12-year-old boy killed in a car accident in Kyiv, serviceman of the 2nd Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine "Khartia" Oleksiy Hlushych, note that many violators continue to drive after paying a fine and even after being deprived of driving privileges.
Kupira points out that "systemic speeding and other dangerous offenses, such as violations of overtaking rules, pedestrian crossing rules, and running red lights" most often lead to tragedies. "The systematic nature of such violations must lead to the revocation of licenses at some point," he said.
"Over 10 years in Ukraine, the number of people who died (in road accidents – IF-U) equals the population of Obukhiv or Vyshhorod, which is over 30,000. That means a whole city has simply died on the road over the last 10 years because it is very difficult to make the right decisions," Kupira added.
The event participants announced the start of collecting signatures for a petition to the president calling to bring the issue of road mortality and injuries to the consideration of the National Security and Defense Council.
The authors of the petition propose canceling or significantly reducing the non-fined speeding threshold, increasing fines with differentiation depending on the level of speeding, introducing a system of penalty points, the possibility of revoking driving privileges for systematic violators, strengthening liability for driving a vehicle after being deprived of a driver's license, expanding automatic violation recording systems, developing safe road infrastructure that physically forces drivers to reduce speed, and conducting regular national information campaigns on safe road behavior.
The initiators of the campaign call on the authorities to start a comprehensive road safety reform, as only a combination of modern legislation, safe infrastructure, automatic control, inevitability of liability, and systemic education can significantly reduce mortality on Ukrainian roads.
