Accidents on the Rise, Drivers Becoming Disrespectful: "Fact"

The "Fact" newspaper reports: Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan periodically informs through his Facebook page about positive changes in various sectors. The picture is presented in the form of statistical figures, and it is natural that there are often questions about whether these numbers reflect the actual situation in a specific sector.

Recently, the Prime Minister informed that the number of citizens killed as a result of road traffic accidents in the first quarter of 2019 decreased by 17.3 percent compared to the same period last year, while fines recorded by speed cameras and other devices number about 51,000.

Sergey Ghahramanyan, co-founder of the public organization "Driver's Friend," told "Fact" that when studying the figures, it should be taken into account that speed cameras with a maximum limitation of 40 km/h were removed from the road after the incidents in April and May of the previous year.

"When these speed cameras are removed, violations are not recorded, of course. These are the most frequently occurring and relatively low-risk violations. In essence, we can say that these are not recorded, which, however, does not mean that drivers are not committing violations. If we add the frequently repeated and unrecorded violations, then their number will indeed be large.

If we compare only the number of fatalities and the various recorded violations with last year's figures, there will certainly be a difference, but we see what is happening in our traffic. On average, 100 accidents occur daily, which are recorded by the traffic police.

Moreover, this is under conditions when the weather is good, while in rainy weather, the number of accidents reaches about 150 daily. There are indeed many accidents, and those numbers are recorded, and the police present them from time to time. However, looking at them and claiming that the traffic situation is good would be incorrect.

Traffic actually has numerous problems that are not reflected in those numerical figures," says Ghahramanyan.

He notes that there are generally many issues within the traffic system.

Read the full article in today’s edition of the newspaper.