The road mortality rate in Ukraine in 2011 was almost twice as bad as the European average: 106 deaths per 1 million population versus 61 in the European Union.

This article was written by Viktor Zagreba, one of the founders of the "Vision Zero" initiative, back in 2012, when Viktor Yanukovych was the president of Ukraine. Over the past four years, neither the content of the problem, nor the proposed solutions and urgent steps have undergone any fundamental changes. Therefore, the article is still relevant! By the way, since its publication on the TEXTY website, it has been viewed by over 43 thousand people.

To reduce the number of deaths, it is worth at least eliminating the “gap” for exceeding the speed limit of 20 km/h, which currently exists in the Code of Administrative Offenses — say, reducing it to 5 km/h and returning the mass use of speed cameras with receipts sent by mail. Several large-scale road accidents with a large number of victims, including those involving buses with foreign tourists, have once again drawn the attention of the public and officials to the problem of road safety. Prime Minister Azarov even held a meeting with representatives of public organizations and a thematic meeting of the government, where it was decided to fight the problem with renewed vigor. This is not the first wave of activity on the part of government officials on the topic of road safety over the past few years, and, most likely, it will calm down with the end of summer — traditionally the hottest season in terms of the number and severity of accidents. 

Probably every Ukrainian still remembers the tragedy near Marganets in the fall of 2010, when a bus driver collided with a diesel locomotive, sending himself and 44 of his passengers into the wreckage. It was then that the government began to actively promise to make roads safer. Six months later, in May 2011, Ukraine joined the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.DESPITE HIGH-LEVEL ACTIVITY, THE SITUATION IN REAL LIFE HAS DETERMINED SEVERELY.This event was marked by a special address on the website of President Yanukovych, as well as the government’s approval of the Strategy for Improving Road Safety . In November of the same year, a number of events were held in Kyiv as part of the Road Safety Week, in which government representatives and traffic police chiefs took part. But despite this high-level activity, the situation in real life has not only not improved over the past 12 months, but has, on the contrary, shown a sharp deterioration. It can be expected that both large-scale accidents and more “smaller”, but no less tragic, accidents will occur more and more in Ukraine.

Last year's accident in Dnipropetrovsk. A BMW smashed into a passenger bus. Seven people were injured.

Some figures. The road mortality rate in Ukraine in 2011 was almost twice as bad as the European average: 106 deaths per 1 million population versus 61 in the European Union. Given the worsening situation since the beginning of 2012 (mortality and injury rates increased by 20-25% compared to last year), this year the mortality rate may reach 130-135 people per 1 million population. In proportion to the number of deaths, the number of injured and disabled people is growing. Among all the victims, the majority (over 40%) are the most vulnerable road users — pedestrians and cyclists. The total economic losses of Ukraine from road accidents probably outweigh the amounts of business investments in our economy — according to the World Bank, Ukraine may lose up to $5 billion annually from accidents.

What's the problem?

If someone thinks that the reasons for the current situation with accidents and deaths on domestic roads are something mysterious and unfathomable, then this person is very mistaken. In fact, the topic of road safety has been studied very carefully in the West in recent decades, and it is thanks to the accurate identification of the causes and the application of adequate actions that the developed countries of the world have dramatically improved the situation with accidents on their roads, achieving impressive results. For example, in the UK and Sweden, the mortality rate per 1 million population is only 32-33 deaths per year, and this is with a significantly larger number of cars and higher mileage than in Ukraine . And these countries do not stop working on the problem - they strive to achieve a “zero vision”, which assumes that not a single (!) citizen should die on the roads. As often happens, the cause of the road safety problem is not one - there are a whole array of them, they are interconnected and interdependent, and it is impossible to establish with certainty which of them is more important and which is less. But the main reasons for this are quite well analyzed in the reports of international organizations working on this problem - primarily the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank. Experts from these organizations study the situation not only in developed countries, but also in the countries of the "second" and "third" world, including Ukraine. Studying their reports provides a lot of information about why exactly we "have what we have". 

And reading these documents would be very useful for all officials, at least somehow related to the problem. Trying to convey the key points of the World Bank report “Countering “Death on Wheels”” to the non-English-speaking target audience of Ukrainian officials, the head of the Bank’s representative office in Ukraine and Belarus, Martin Reiser, after the report was released in 2010, even resorted to journalism (see the article “The ‘Hidden Epidemic’ of Deaths from Road Accidents on Ukraine’ , the newspaper “Dzerkalo Tyzhnia” dated 05.06.2010). Reiser explained in a short and accessible form that Ukraine is catastrophically lagging behind Europe in road safety indicators and what exactly needs to be done to correct the situation. All the points from Reiser’s article are relevant even now, since absolutely nothing has changed in the past two years, neither in the accident rate nor in the state policy to combat it. 

So, based on the aforementioned World Bank report, as well as the WHO report “On the State of Road Safety in Europe” (2009), the main factors of the alarming situation with accidents and deaths on the roads of Ukraine are: 

• 1. Low level of driver training and corruption in issuing driver's licenses. This is both the obsolescence and inadequacy of the content of the curriculum and teaching methods in driving schools, and the fact that learning to drive and taking the exam at the traffic police is not at all necessary due to the total corruption of the entire system and the ability to “buy a license”. 
• 2. The existing condition of the roads and weak organization of traffic safety. This includes not only and not so much potholes and holes, but also inadequate road design and outdated road construction standards, dangerous arrangement of pedestrian crossings, improper use of markings and road signs, insufficient use of forced deceleration devices, bumpers and dividing barriers, and other systemic shortcomings. Experts also note the lack of traffic safety audit practice, which is why data on accident concentration points and typical accident scenarios are not collected and analyzed in our country, and no measures are taken to eliminate “deadly places”. 
• 3. Excessive speed on urban roads. Although the speed limit in populated areas of Ukraine is 60 km/h, in fact, we can drive up to 80 km/h with impunity, since exceeding the speed limit by up to 20 km/h does not entail any punishment. The World Bank report reminds us that in Europe the standard speed limit for a city is 50 km/h, and 30 km/h for populated areas. In addition, even such high Ukrainian speed limits as 80 km/h in populated areas are massively and with impunity ignored by road users. 
• 4. Inefficiency of the system of recording violations and punishing violators. Here they mention not only widespread bribery among traffic police inspectors, but also the lack of technical means of photo and video recording of violations on the roads, and a selective attitude towards violators - foreign experts, it turns out, know about various kinds of “servants of the people”, owners of “passes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs”, police or parliamentary numbers, and other numerous groups of road users who never bear responsibility for their dangerous driving. The reports also mention the absence of a “point” system of punishment, when penalty points are accrued for each violation depending on the severity and danger of a particular case, and upon reaching a certain “threshold”, the validity of the driver’s license is suspended or canceled. In addition, insufficiently high fines for violations are noted as an element of this problem, which are not a deterrent for many drivers. These four factors are not an exhaustive list, but they can be considered basic and some of the most critical. All of them, among others, are mentioned in the draft Road Safety Strategy , prepared for Ukraine by the European TEN-T project in 2010. The project, by the way, was implemented in close cooperation with the Ministry of Transport (now the Ministry of Infrastructure), and its activities were attended by both high-ranking representatives of the State Traffic Inspectorate and heads of parliamentary committees who signed its conclusions. But in 2011, for unknown reasons, our officials decided not to look at this recently prepared draft document, but developed their own “Strategy.” It is worth dwelling on it separately, because this document was officially approved by the Cabinet of Ministers and determines state policy in this area until 2015.

"Strategy"

Initially, as is customary, the “strategy”, hastily prepared and approved in May 2011, describes the problem in rather abstract phrases and defines broad and vague “directions for overcoming it”. As is often the case in the practice of the Ukrainian government, this document does not contain the main elements that a strategy should actually contain - goals (clearly tangible and measurable), a description of the planned actions, their sequence, as well as responsible persons or state bodies. Since these basic elements are absent from the document, its name - “strategy” - does not correspond to the content and should be written in quotes. 10 months after the adoption of the “strategy”, its creators released another document to the world - the Action Plan for its Implementation / Not much thicker than its “mother” in terms of volume (ten pages compared to six), this document describes in slightly greater detail what the state is going to do, when exactly, and who will be responsible for it. According to this Plan, our main weapon in the fight against road deaths and injuries is rule-making, that is, the preparation and approval of new official documents. As if confessing to society the imitation content of both the “strategy” itself and the Action Plan supplementing it, the government plans to prepare and publish an entire library of new texts in the coming years: a target state program, regional programs (in each region, Crimea, Kyiv and Sevastopol), standard provisions, methods, plans, procedures, requirements, concepts, instructions and manuals - at least 41 items! It has been decided to change and correct about 10 more old documents - although it has not yet been decided how exactly. 

And although all the future “tactical” papers relate, at least in name, to road transport and traffic safety, they, unfortunately, do not correlate with the key causes of the problem and recommendations of international organizations described above. In addition to announcing future regulations, the document repeatedly uses such abstract phrases as “ensure a study,” “work out the issue,” and “conduct an analysis,” without any expected results, timeframes, or forms of reporting on implementation. The long list of items in the Action Plan, supported by a list of institutions responsible for their implementation (on average, from 2 to 5 departments opposite each item), should obviously communicate to the reader the high importance and complexity of the problem, as well as the profound perfection and thoughtfulness of the “strategy” itself. However, in reality, with this approach, the government only “waters down” the problem, shifting responsibility for its solution downwards - to its structural units (a total of 17 ministries and departments are mentioned), regional state administrations, and even district and city executive committees. 

That is, if we continue the military analogy, from which, in fact, the term “strategy” comes from, the government as the general staff announced to its numerous armies, units and formations that each of them must decide for itself how to fight the insidious enemy. Artillery draws up a plan for itself, aviation does what its general decides, and the infantry attacks on all fronts — or, conversely, defends, depending on the specific situation “in the regions”. The fact that such an army has no chance of victory is unlikely to cause doubts even among people far from military art. It is interesting that along with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Infrastructure, which are mentioned in the plan of measures most often, the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Sports should also play a leading role in solving the problem of traffic safety. This ministry is mentioned as the responsible executor of various measures as many as 18 times. It seems that the government believes that since “improvements” in all areas for which Tabachnyk’s ministry is responsible have already occurred, this department should now throw its best personnel (if there are any) into the fight for traffic safety. Well, if so, then we can advise Azarov to think about adding an appropriate phrase to the name of this multidisciplinary ministry. 

Oddly enough, between shifting responsibility for solving the problem down the “vertical of power” and describing future “tactical” documents, the Action Plan also managed to find several specific measures that are somehow connected, in fact, with the existing problem and its main causes. To be precise, there were two such measures: 

• 1) The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Infrastructure are obliged to propose to the Government during 2012 to increase fines for traffic violations. This is the only measure in the two “strategic” documents that really has the potential to reduce accidents and deaths on the roads. However, it is unlikely that even it will be implemented this year - until the November elections, no one will probably touch on this topic, which is unlikely to be favorably received by a society accustomed to "speeding" (let's recall the increase in fines in 2009). 
• 2) Another measure with great potential, but also with unclear chances of implementation, sounds like this: "Take measures to introduce the use of technical means of automatically recording traffic violations into the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' Traffic Police." That is, we are talking about radars with cameras, which are familiar to any developed country. Although the President declared the severity of the problem a year ago and called for urgent, urgent action, the Cabinet of Ministers generously decided to give the Ministry of Internal Affairs a lot of time to "take measures," until the end of the term of the "strategy" itself (2012-2015). 

At the same time, no one even expects that these measures of the police officers within three years should be crowned with any success - no specific requirements and expected results, such as the number of cameras installed in each calendar year or in each region, are specified in the document. That is, most likely, there may not be any cameras on Ukrainian roads. Or there may be, considering how actively over the past few weeks the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Traffic Inspectorate have begun to throw messages into the information space about the need for the rapid introduction of such photo-video systems, almost directly calling them a panacea for all ills. Another specific measure that was found among the government plans is the introduction of an automated system for recording violations with the function of automatically recording information about paid fines. This should happen this year, and, among other functions, should eliminate the idiotic procedure in its essence, when fined drivers, after paying the fine to the treasury accounts of local budgets, are also required to take a bank receipt to the traffic police station at their place of registration. 

The step is positive and long-awaited, and may even be implemented before the elections as part of the “improvements”. But, unfortunately, this measure itself has nothing to do with the problem of traffic safety, which is the subject of the document, so we do not include it in the list of two points. If this automated system were to go hand in hand with the introduction of a penalty point system, it would be a different matter. In addition to all of the above, for some inexplicable reason, completely non-strategic measures, such as the annual campaigns “Attention! Pedestrian!”, “Children on the Road!”, “Bus” and “Carrier-Winter”, have been included in the “strategic plans” of Azarov, Zakharchenko and Kolesnikov. These “operational and preventive” remnants of the Soviet system are carried out by the traffic police from year to year, but no one has any substantiated evidence of their effectiveness, because no one has ever evaluated it, this effectiveness. Why it was necessary to put these seasonal “operations”, which are already held every year, in the Strategic Action Plan is unclear. Apparently, to increase the volume of the text. These events were accompanied by the annual Road Safety Week, which should be held every November. In this case, however, there is hope for something more meaningful and effective, since the traffic police and the government only participate there, and the main organizers are public and international organizations. But again, no conferences and round tables by themselves will reduce the accident rate and the severity of its consequences, until efforts are directed to eliminating the causes of the problem.

What is really worth doing?

Substantive, adapted to Ukraine advice on the topic of “what to do” can be found both in the already mentioned article by Martin Reiser and in the final report of the TEN-T project. Therefore, the author will not repeat them all, but will only note those that seem to him the most important. The main first step, which all international experts advise, is the creation of a leading agency (in English - “leading agency”) responsible for traffic safety, and its proper funding. Currently, there is no such institution in Ukraine. In Europe, this is usually the “Traffic Safety Center”, which exists under the Ministry of Transport and has guaranteed budget funding. The author sees no reason why the same cannot be done in Ukraine, transferring the key role in developing a strategy and coordinating tactics on this problem from the State Road Safety Inspectorate, which is already overloaded with various functions that are not inherent to it, to a specialized unit of the Ministry of Infrastructure. It would also be possible to take some creative step, for example, to reformat the “Euro-2012” unit into the Traffic Safety Center. 

There, under the “Euro” they supposedly gathered enough smart people who can solve complex tasks in a short time and even speak English. Other advice from the government is to develop a truly high-quality strategy and action plan, with specific measurable goals (WHO, for example, recommends a 50% reduction in mortality by 2020), clearly described measures, deadlines and other attributes of a high-quality plan. The document can be based on the above-mentioned draft strategy, prepared two years ago within the framework of the TEN-T project. Among the “second wave” measures, they may be: reforming the traffic police in order to improve the efficiency of law enforcement and eradicate corruption - both when issuing driver’s licenses and when punishing violators; developing new standards for designing roads and streets, especially in populated areas; introducing the practice of auditing road safety, collecting and analyzing data on all road accidents; improving the speed and quality of providing medical care to victims of car accidents. For each of the mentioned points of possible activity in international research, there is a huge amount of information, including a detailed description of the best world practices. Therefore, if desired, it is possible to prepare a very high-quality action plan and within a few years completely change (or, rather, create) state policy in this area.In addition, if the government really decides to move from imitation to action in the field of traffic safety, international organizations such as the World Bank, WHO, and the European Union are ready to lend a helping hand — and this hand will include not only expert knowledge and technical recommendations, but also financial resources for their implementation. This was stated directly on behalf of these organizations by Martin Reiser in the aforementioned publication.

Hot events

But what if. Most likely, even such a shortened and simplified list of recommendations will sound like something unfeasible to the current government. Therefore, it is worth noting several “hot measures” that the government could implement “today”. Although they will not solve the problem in principle, they can extinguish its severity and achieve a reduction in mortality to a level of less than 100 deaths per 1 million population. Such measures could be: 

• 1. Elimination of the “gap” for exceeding the speed limit of 20 km/h, which currently exists in the Code of Administrative Offenses — say, reducing it to 5 km/h; 
• 2. Return and mass use of photo radars with receipts sent by mail; 
• 3. Raising the level of fines for dangerous violations; 
• 4. Introduction of a system of penalty points to combat chronic violators (simultaneously with the future information system); 
• 5. An intensive information campaign and increased fines for the use of seat belts, which are hardly used by at least 10% of motorists in our country today, hence the inadequately large number of deaths in accidents where such an “outcome” could have been avoided by simply wearing them. 

So, the problem is actually clear, its causes are known, and possible solutions, apparently, are also no secret. So we can wish the government what the slogans left over from Soviet times along some highways wish Ukrainians: “Have a good journey!” and “Safe road!”. *** The material was originally published on 10.08.2012 on the website http://texty.org.ua/pg/article/editorial/read/38819/Trupy_na_dorogah_Cherez_korupciju_i_nejefektyvnist.