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PARIS, Dec 3 (AFP) – A crackdown involving radar cameras, spot checks and tougher fines has led to a 30 percent drop in French road deaths in November compared to the same month last year, the French interior ministry said Thursday.
Road safety groups hailed the figure as an “extraordinary success,” one specialist, professor Claude Got, told journalists after a meeting with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The ministry declined to make public figures for the number killed, but Got said that, if the trend was extended over a 12-month period, it would mean 1,700 fewer deaths on French roads per year – “which represents more lives saved than all those lost in murders in this country.”
France has traditionally had one of the worst road fatality records in the European Union, with around 8,000 people dying in accidents every year — double that of Britain, which has a comparable population though a much smaller road network.
Got said the dramatic drop was owed to “better prevention based of fair repression” – a reference to random alcohol and seatbelt checks and radar cameras that have been introduced over the past year.
Related articles: France cracks down on speeding
© AFP
Subject: French news