25/11/2018
It does not help matters that many drivers seem quite happy to speed along while drunk, or uninsured, or chatting away on their mobile phones, without seatbelts and in unsafe vehicles. No doubt this weekend’s list of offences will be just like last weekend’s.
The solution is education; sons and daughters need not to copy the bad driving example of their parents, plus there is a need for more policing and a penalty points system that is not thwarted by an interminable court system.
For the Algarve, it does not help that much of the traffic using the EN125 would use the much safer motorway, if this reverted to the toll-free model.
https://www.algarvedailynews.com/news/15550-weekend-drivers-drunk-speeding-on-the-phone-and-uninsured
One accident that was entirely avoidable was not due to the victim’s behaviour but that of the local authority that kept a highly dangerous road open despite years of warnings that it could collapse.
The Borba to Vila Viçosa road in the Alentejo at one point passes between two quarries, a narrow stretch of highway with a 50-metre drop either side.
This road did collapse and the vehicles travelling along it at the time, plunged into the water below, along with thousands of tonnes of rock.
The head of Portugal’s Order of Engineers, Mineiro Aires, claimed astonishment that this highly dangerous road remained open to traffic as, “It was a situation that had been identified at least four years ago, closing the road already had been considered."
The local mayor, quarry owner António Anselmo, said he was unaware of safety issues or reports.
This is not believable as the National Institute of Engineering Technology submitted a report in 2006 which stated quite clearly that the area was one of high risk. Aloso, the situation has been discussed in Council meetings.
This laissez-faire attitude to safety also can be witnessed in the bland assurances that Lisbon's Ponte 25 de Abril, over the Tagus, is ‘just fine’ (HERE) and that the bridge at Entre-os-Rios, 40 kilometres upstream from Porto was suitable for traffic, prior to its collapse in 2001 after a support pillar gave way following prolonged heavy rain.
In that accident, a busload of 64 day trippers, including many children, and the occupants of two cars, perished in the swollen waters of the Douro.
The local Council had been campaigning for a new bridge for a decade as the old one, was built in the days of horses, donkeys and carts and showed obvious signs of age.
Had a busload of children plunged to their certain deaths in this latest accident at the Borba quarry, would our polytetrafluoroethylene-coated Minister of Infrastructures have resigned, following the example set by Public Works Minister, Jorge Coelho, in 2001?
The quarry road is the Council's responsibility but this is not acceptable as many Councils cannot be trusted to run regular safety audits of 'at risk' structures, such as roads and bridges – as in the case of Borba Council which deftly has avoiding closing this road despite a sheaf of adverse reports.
Over last weekend, which included ‘World Day of Road Victims’ on Sunday, 149 drivers were done for drunk driving and 586 were caught speeding. On Saturday...
