The road massacre on weekends, 195 dead in 2023

March has just begun and almost 200 people have already died on Italian roads over the weekends. The numbers of the now usual and sad massacre are from Asaps, an association of friends and supporters of the traffic police: since the beginning of 2023 there are 195 victims, 73 were under 35 years old. The account of the association, based in Forlì, starts from the weekend of December 30 and considers the time from midnight on Friday to midnight on Sunday. In practice, the 72 hours are looked at, as the Ministry of the Interior does and without including the people who are injured and later die in hospital from the consequences of the injuries. This weekend, including the two girls who died in the Treviso area, Eralda Spahllari and Barbara Brotto, there are already 17 victims, seven of whom are under 35. “It strikes me that at the moment we have counted five accidents with two deaths each, therefore ten deaths in five accidents”, comments Giordano Biserni, president of the association. Yesterday, Asaps also released the report on dead pedestrians: there are 87 since the beginning of the year, 51 in January and 36 in February, 64 men and 23 women, 70 Italians and 17 foreigners, a sharp increase compared to the data for the first two months of 2022. when 58 people had lost their lives. “There are numerous – explains Biserni – the accidents caused by distracted driving, the one that makes the driver say ‘I didn’t see it’. For years we have been asking for the administrative sanctions to be tightened up for using a cell phone while driving, with the suspension of the driving license at the first violation, and we ask that this behavior be included in the specific aggravating circumstances of the crimes of road personal injury and road homicide.And we need more repressive control activity on the roads, given that the rules provide for as many as eight points deducted from the driving license in case of failure precedence”. The emergency on the roads is therefore constant. The Government, through the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini, announced changes to the highway code at the beginning of the year and recalled the need for more road safety education in schools and tougher penalties for those who drive drunk or under the influence of drugs. And for cyclists work is being done to insert the rule to have at least one and a half meters of distance in order to overcome.