1. Russian annual road toll over 30,000: WHO
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 26/06/2009
Reporter: Scott Bevan
One of the most dangerous places for Russians to be is on the road, with the average annual road death toll over the last five years exceeding 30,000 according to the World Health Organisation.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Last week, the World Health Organisation released its first global report on road safety which showed that 1.2 million people lose their lives in road accidents each year. And one of the most dangerous places to be on the road is Russia. Over the past five years, there's been an average of more than 30,000 road deaths a year. Police say tougher laws and higher fines are bringing down the appalling statistics, but motoring experts say both drivers and the authorities have to change their ways to save more lives. Moscow correspondent Scott Bevan reports.
SCOTT BEVAN, REPORTER: Evgeny Chak is returning to the road in Moscow where his close friend Nicolai Nekrasov was killed in 2007. The 22-year-old was racing another car, apparently reaching speeds of up to 160 km/h, when it all went horribly wrong.
EVGENY CHAK, CRASH VICTIM'S FRIEND: He didn't see the parked car and he crashed into it exactly here.
SCOTT BEVAN: The car he'd been racing also crashed and its two occupants died as well. Those three killed in just one accident were among more than 33,000 reported deaths on Russia's roads in 2007.
YURY GEIKO, MOTORING WRITER (voiceover translation): That's two and a half times more than Russia lost in 10 years of war in Afghanistan.
SCOTT BEVAN: A recent study for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that among its 30 member countries, Russia is the worst for road deaths.
VICTOR POKHMELKIN, MOVEMENT OF RUSSIAN MOTORISTS: This is a national tragedy.
SCOTT BEVAN: Driving experts say there are many reasons for the appalling statistics. One is the condition of the roads. They may be the butt of jokes on websites, but former parliamentarian and the head of a group called the Movement of Russian Motorists Victor Pokhmelkin says they're no laughing matter.
VICTOR POKHMELKIN (voiceover translation): If you drive through Russia, you'll see that only about 8 to 10 per cent of roads are up to modern standards.
SCOTT BEVAN: Another reason cited is that driving laws have been too lax and the fines too low.
CAR DRIVER: Even compared with the average wage of a Russian motorist, the fines have been too low. Driving through a red light, for instance, costs 100 roubles or about $US3.
SCOTT BEVAN: The Government has been toughening up the laws and increasing fines, targeting key areas such as speeding and drink driving. The authorities have also tried to shock drivers into changing their ways. A series of confronting TV ads have been made, but they've rarely hit the public eye, with the major state-run stations reportedly refusing to air them because they were too brutal.Police say the toll has been decreasing ever since.
VLADIMIR KONDAKOV, RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS (voiceover translation): In 2008, there were more than 21,000 car accidents registered in the Russian Federation in which about 30,000 people were killed.
SCOTT BEVAN: Russian motoring experts say that to bring about real change to the country's driving culture and to save many more lives, the Government has to do more than tighten the laws. It also has to ensure that the police properly enforce them.One of the major problems experts say has been corruption, with officers being bribed to turn a blind eye to those breaking the law or trying to extract money from drivers who have done nothing wrong. The traffic police force, they argue, needs an overhaul.
VICTOR POKHMELKIN (voiceover translation): When the road police are unprofessional, when they've been badly corrupted, the problem of sorting out this mess with their help is like extinguishing a fire with petrol.
VLADIMIR KONDAKOV (voiceover translation): Of course black sheep occur in all families. There are cases of bribery. But it happens not because someone takes the bribe, but because someone offers it.
SCOTT BEVAN: Yury Geiko is setting up a new drivers' association to push the Government to do more to improve the motorists' lot and to continue tidying up the road culture in Russia.
YURY GEIKO (voiceover translation): I've just counted: out of 40 cars, only three drivers were wearing their seatbelts and they were expensive cars.
SCOTT BEVAN: Evgeny Chak fears that changing Russia's driving culture will be slow and painful as many more suffer the fate of his friend.
EVGENY CHAK: I'm always thinking, "Why? Why always so many problems with the road, with the traffic?"
SCOTT BEVAN: Scott Bevan, Lateline.
2. High road toll in China
The World Today - Friday, 14 November , 2003 Reporter: John Taylor
HAMISH ROBERTSON: To China now, and the country's enormous road toll. New statistics have just been released revealing that nearly 90,000 people have died in traffic accidents in the country this year. That's more than the entire population of some Australian cities dying every year. And what makes the figure even more startling is China's low level of car ownership. Well, we're joined in Beijing now by our China Correspondent John Taylor John, it's not that long ago that most Chinese were riding about on bicycles, just why does the country have this enormous road toll?
JOHN TAYLOR: It's a combination of factors, Hamish. Apparently, there were about 85,666 people that died in the first ten months of this year, another 400,000 or so people were injured in more than half a million accidents.And just exactly why, is a combination of factors – booming car ownership in China, meaning tens of thousands of new drivers are now on the roads, as well as poor road conditions and a lax attitude to traffic laws.State media recently reported that half of all Chinese drivers admit to having dozed off behind the wheel at least once and excessive speed is also a big problem, with more than half the crashes occurring on highways on sunny days.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: This very high road toll obviously has a devastating personal cost in China to relatives and the families of the victims. Is there any information, though, about the impact on the economy?
JOHN TAYLOR: There is, but it is tied in more generally with accidents, industrial accidents. State media says that more than 380 people die every day in China from industrial and road accidents at a cost to the economy of more than $16 billion a year in direct economic losses.We're talking about road traffic accidents killing more people between the ages of 1 and 34 in China, than all other causes combined, and that road accidents, traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for people aged up to 45 and the leading cause of working life years lost in this country.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: As any recent visitor to China will verify, the first thing you see in Shanghai and Beijing are these enormous skyscrapers going up. Clearly that construction activity isn't being matched by road building.
JOHN TAYLOR: No, but China faces the difficulty of it's such a large country, and how they allocate scarce resources to building roads, and many of the accidents that are occurring are involving pedestrians and cyclists and motorcyclists. It's not so much the drivers that are dying, it's their passengers and people that they are hitting on the sides of the road.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: And it does seem John, that China can no longer be described as the land of bicycles.
JOHN TAYLOR: No, it definitely can't. Car ownership is booming, last year motor vehicle sales surged about 60 per cent and although the pace has slowed a bit this year, the numbers are still growing at an amazing annualised rate of about fifty per cent.
HAMISH ROBERTSON: John Taylor, in Beijing, many thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment