Archive: April 2017

We are asked: how did the story end with the evidence you discovered of falsification of mortality statistics by the National Police? So far, nothing, the problem has not been resolved. New evidence of a large-scale underestimation of mortality data by the National Police was provided by the Ministry of Health. We received these documents in the relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada. According to the Ministry of Health (the quality of which is also questionable, knowing the general situation with data management in this department), 4,809 people died in road accidents in Ukraine in 2016. 

This is 50% more than the National Police reported ( 3,187 ). And this approximately coincides with our estimates published in the report.   It is noteworthy that the data of the Ministry of Health in previous years also differed significantly from the data of the State Traffic Inspectorate/Ministry of Internal Affairs. This difference decreased in 2013-2015, and in 2015, and especially in 2016, it began to grow sharply again. Here is a brief overview of the minor actions and statements of the National Police after the publication of our report:

1. Already on February 16, the Road Traffic Safety Department (BDR Department) of the National Police -- a former structural unit of the State Traffic Inspectorate -- published an emotional press release in which they accused us of distortion and manipulation. In the same release, they admitted that the data on road accidents was false, but emphasized that other police officers were to blame for this - the Department of Information Support and Coordination of the Police "102" .
2. In a comment to Public Radio, the head of this Department "102" Oleksandr Zamyslov rejected these accusations: "We do not publish statistics, we only count. And it is the Department of Prevention that prepares and publishes statistics. Statistical data are collected directly from regional workplaces, which are entered by employees of both the Patrol Police Department and Department of Prevention."
3. Sometime in March or April 2017, the BDR Directorate replaced the statistics file on its website , presumably based on "reconciliations and clarifications," and now claims that 3,410 people died in 2016 instead of the 3,187 previously stated. However, this inflated figure does not even roughly reflect reality.

Among other statements, the BDR Department in its offended press release wrote the following passage: "If the authors of the article, instead of making incomprehensible accusations, had contacted the National Police for clarification, they would have been informed..." . Therefore, we sent an e-mail to the head of the BDR Department, I.M. Prokhorenko , to the department's official address info@sai.gov.ua, in accordance with the law "On Citizens' Appeals", asking the following questions:

In your post on the website, you suggested "contacting us for clarification", so on behalf of the NGO "Vision Zero" I am addressing you and the Road Safety Department with the following questions and requests:

1. "How many people died and were injured in road accidents in Ukraine in 2016, based on the results of "reconciliation with medical institutions and generalization of the facts found"? With a breakdown by regions and the city of Kyiv.
2. Was information received from your units in the regions and what are the results of the generalization of this information? While preparing the report, we discovered that the data from the Main Police Department is very different from those in your tables on the website, and, probably, these data from the regions are closer to reality (although whether they are complete is also a question).
3. When will the revised accident statistics tables for 2016 be published on the Department's website? Please provide at least an approximate date.
4. Has a new Procedure for Recording Road Accidents been developed and at what stage is its approval?
5. We kindly ask you to provide for review the documents mentioned in the press release: "a new road accident registration card (taking into account the recommendations of the public and European experts) and the prepared draft resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on road accident registration data."

This official letter of ours to the Road Traffic Department, dated 23.02.2017, was ignored -- no response was received for two months. Our unofficial appeals, written and oral, to the higher echelons of the National Police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as raising this issue during working meetings and sessions within the walls of the Transport Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, were also ignored.

The National Police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs not only cannot reduce the number of deaths on the roads. They cannot even COUNT this number of deaths.

The National Police's data on road accidents for the first months of 2017 is just as false as for 2016.

Our attempts to draw attention to the problem have led to nothing. The leadership of the National Police and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are well aware of the problem, but are not taking any action, probably because publishing truthful mortality data is politically disadvantageous.

There was no contact with us and no offers to sort out the situation together.

We, as a public organization, have already exhausted all available diplomatic resources, we see complete ignoring and neglect of this problem by those who can and are obliged to solve it. Therefore, from now on, we will include other mechanisms so that this problem is solved and responsible persons in the National Police, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, their departments and offices bear due responsibility.

1. Now, together with other friendly organizations, we are preparing an open letter from over 30 public organizations addressed to the President of Ukraine with a demand to personally understand the situation, why data on road accidents is being falsified.
2. The next step will be mass letters from public organizations to the embassies of Canada, the USA, Japan, other foreign countries, as well as the representative offices of the IMF, World Bank, EIB, European Commission, UN and WHO , highlighting the situation (we already have the text of the investigation in English), showing the inaction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Police (absence of any action within 3 months after public organizations highlighted the problem), and asking foreign partners to influence the Ukrainian government and make solving this problem a condition for continued cooperation.
3. If all this does not help, then there are also plans for protests outside the walls of the Ministry of Internal Affairs , directed specifically against the inaction of the head of the National Assembly of Ukraine Knyazev and the Minister of Defense Avakov .

We invite you to join this fight for people's lives! Offer your ideas and direct help with your hands and head. All these letters need to be written, signed, stamped, and sent abroad. Thank you!

A story about the problem of speed, filmed around one case - a pedestrian crossing on Zabolotnogo Street, which we thoroughly analyzed a few weeks ago (see the report at this link ). Our activist and member of the Kyiv Cyclist Association team, Vadym Denysenko, convinced TV journalists and viewers that such crossings cannot be built. And that Ukraine suffers from the lack of speed control. Thank you to the TV journalists for covering this topic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJGsPQecIpQ

Here is a short fact sheet on why speeding is a problem. 

The document was prepared with the participation of experts from Vision Zero as part of the Safe Roads Campaign. 

👉🏻Facts about speeding from Viktor Zagreba