TIRANA, July 5 – Albanian highway police are urging drivers, both residents and visitors, to be extra careful on the country’s roads as the tourist season gets in full gear.
The call comes as a string of accidents left four people dead and half a dozen wounded over the past week in accidents ranging from a single motorcycle hitting a wall to two cars hitting head on at high speed.
Border police are reporting large numbers of vehicles from outside the country entering Albania due to the tourist season. These range from Albanian migrants visiting home for the holidays to tourists from neighboring countries and beyond, largely increasing the flow of vehicles into the country’s roads, particularly in tourist areas in southern and central Albania.
“We have a lot of vehicles from outside the country due to the tourist season, people who are unfamiliar with the roads, so we urge everyone to be careful, above all to keep at a speed at or below the limits posted,” the national highway patrol chief told local media this week.
Police say there will be zero tolerance for drinking and driving and the new harsher penalties will be applied to those who are caught driving while intoxicated.
Road accidents in Albania have become the greatest threat to human life. The number of deaths every year attributable to road accidents is high mostly owing to lack of awareness about road safety and the bad condition of road infrastructure.
According to the latest World Health Organization data, Albania suffered 420 road traffic deaths in 2014 or 1.61 percent of total deaths. In 2015, there were 270 fatal accidents. Officials from the Albanian Ministry of Transports and Infrastructure have blamed poor driving culture. Statistics have shown that 74 percent of the fatal accidents in the country were caused by drivers’ misconduct, 22 percent by motorcycle or bicycle riders and pedestrians, and the rest due to poor infrastructure conditions.
A recent report from World Bank revealed that Albania has one of the highest mortality rate caused by road accidents at an average of 84.7 deaths/year for every 100.000 vehicles. The World Bank estimates that road accidents have tragic human costs but are also a burden for the economy. Data shows that the economic cost of road accidents in Albania is an average 130 million Euros/year or 1.5 percent of the GDP.
