Record 10km queue at Antirio
Despite a heavy police presence on the country’s roads, the Easter exodus resulted in a large number of deaths over the long holiday weekend. Traffic police said that from Thursday until yesterday afternoon, there were 199 accidents in which 34 people were killed and 266 were injured, 44 of them seriously. With hundreds of thousands of cars still on the country’s roads after a mass exodus from Athens and other cities, and with the holiday lasting until Wednesday because of today’s belated May Day commemoration, these numbers could rise. Indicative of the large numbers of vehicles on the roads was the massive line of cars waiting to cross the Gulf of Corinth at its western end near Patras. Traffic police chief Costas Tzekis said the queue for ferries at Antirio on the gulf’s northern shore was over 10 kilometers long. This was unprecedented, he said.