The next step in road safety is driverless cars - Minister Chris Fearne
Most road accidents are caused by drivers’ fatigue, poor driving judgement or speeding - with a driverless car this risk of this happening reduces, Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Chris Fearne said yesterday.
With the rise in artificial intelligence and technological revolutions, Minister Fearne noted that driverless cars are the right step towards increasing safety on the roads.
Speaking during a Road Safety Conference in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), held on The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, Fearne said that road traffic accidents are one of the highest causes of injury and death within the age groups 15-40.
In the WHO region, in one hour 10 people die in road traffic accidents. 8,500 lives are lost per year in Europe while, on a global scale, 1.3 million people die per year because of road accidents.
Fearne said that such road accidents are preventable with the use of law enforcement and educational campaigns. Excessive speed, driving under the influence, fatigue and distractions, failure to wear seatbelts are all causes of accidents, and could easily be avoided with the right approach. He said that such issues are currently being tackled through means of legislation, including stricter levels of drink driving limit, more speed cameras and the reconstruction of roads to be safer for not just the driver, but also passengers, cyclists and pedestrians.
Jonathan Passmore, WHO Regional Officer for Europe, noted recommendations made by the WHO to promote road safety. Passmore said that countries such as Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway have the lowest road traffic mortality rates in the world after focusing on a safe system approach to road traffic. The system focuses on the priority of the person’s life and is based on reducing the amount of energy to prevent accidents and to drive the safest vehicles.
Education, law enforcement and decreasing the number of vehicles are a Maltese priority, Jean Todt, UN SG Special Envoy on Road Safety pointed out. The former Ferrari chief said that Malta already has a large population, and with the growing number of tourists, the island still has the chance to achieve what bigger countries are establishing in regards to road safety. Todt agreed that autonomous electric vehicles are a step towards the future, while insisting that enforcement in Malta must be stricter. He reflected on the fact that simply being driven to the conference not everyone in the car wore their seatbelt, and this alone is an issue which must be addressed immediately.
Todt also mentioned that over 1,000 new vehicles are introduced on the Maltese road every month, which for a small country is an alarming amount. He noted that unlike numerous diseases, we actually have the prescription to decrease the number of fatalities on the road, beginning with education, law enforcement and people respecting one another on the roads.