Plan aims at taming motorists
Drivers are to be monitored by 400 more speed cameras on improved national highways, according to an Public Works Ministry plan which aims at fighting the country’s high annual road fatality rate. Public Works Minister Giorgos Souflias said yesterday the plan – whose implementation has begub – will run for three years and will cost 90 million euros. Government measures announced in the past aimed at taming motorists have almost always proved to be ineffective due to poor policing. Every year some 1,500 people are killed on the country’s roads and 20,000 more are injured. In addition, the ministry intends to improve driving conditions by putting up better signage, installing better road lights and increasing roadside and median strip barriers. The minister also said that a 153,000-euro report on whether speed limits need to be changed will be ready in a month. Meanwhile, Souflias also announced that the government is to sign a contract in the next few days regarding construction of a drying plant as part of Athens’s waste management program.
