Civil Governor wants safer towns

“The chief concern of experts and councilmen over recent years has been on improving traffic flow and increasing the number of parking areas – but road traffic accidents must now start being a priority for councils”, she said during a seminar promoted by the ANSR -“Autoridade Nacional de Segurança Rodoviária” (national road safety authority) - in Faro.

Isilda Gomes considers that the first step is to give local mayors statistical data so that they can start analysing local incidents, identify their respective causes and apply measures that would help reduce the number of accidents.

In 2009, for instance, 6.133 people were run over – an average of 17 per day, according to the ANSR.

Of this number, 95 per cent happened in areas where the speed limit was 50 kilometres per hour – and still there were 92 people killed.

Taking all last year’s road traffic accidents, a total of 738 people died.