“State is more concerned with fires than road death rates”, says Portuguese Automobile association president

Carlos Barbosa, the president of the Automobile Club of Portugal (ACP) said today that the state has lost interest in road death prevention, pointing out that there is currently more concern about fires than about those who die on Portugal’s roads.

Barbosa said this in reaction to the figures of the latest report by the National Road Safety Authority on road accidents, reported on by the Público newspaper. The report indicated that there has been a growth in fatalities this year, and that the value is at its highest since 2012.

The ACP President believes that the State is not investing in any form of solution to this issue, using the automobile insurance fund money from insurance companies for other purposes.

“With this money that does not belong to them, they end up buying radars, cars, and pistols when they are supposed to be investing more in road safety campaigns in the way that the Government used to,” he said. “The Government cares more about the risk of wildfires than the many people who are killed on the roads “.

Approved about two years ago by the Government, the National Strategic Road Safety Plan (PENSE 2020) aims to reduce the number of fatalities by 56% and the serious injuries by 22% by 2020, compared to 2010 when 937 people died on the Portuguese roads and 2,475 were seriously injured.

According to the recently released MRSR report, the number of road fatalities increased by 12% in 2018 and last year alone 675 people died within 30 days of being involved in an accident.