Tessa Dunlop reports for BBC
Radio 4’s Crossing Continents programme,
first broadcast on 22 August 2019, about road conditions in Romania. Having visited and worked there since the
early 1990s (and with Romanian relatives) she has become increasingly aware of
how dangerous the roads are. She focuses
on the state of the road network in north-eastern Romania, though she says the
situation is replicated across the country.
Roads have not improved since the
1989 revolution, while the amount of traffic has increased. There is not a safe driving culture: people
ignore the speed limits and the rules of the road; alcohol and drugs are
contributory factors to the high accident rate, while slow-moving horse and
carts add to the problem. Railway
crossings without barriers are accident hot-spots claiming an alarming number
of lives each year.
Stefan Mandachi, a successful and
charismatic businessman, is leading the ‘Romania vrea autostrazi’ (Romania
wants highways) campaign to build motorways in the region. Spurred into action by his inability to reach
his dying mother in hospital because of the lack of decent roads, his efforts include
a video, billboards and the hashtag #sieu (count me in). He constructed a symbolic metre of motorway
which has become a tourist attraction.
Mandachi says 60,000 people have
died on Romanian roads since 1989. Two
thousand die each year, the highest rate per capita in the EU, twice the EU
average and 3-4 times the figure for the UK.
Mandachi says that new roads, including motorways, are required, following
which bad behaviour should be punished, in order to reduce the number of
fatalities and serious injuries. In
March 2019 he called on the country to stop work for fifteen minutes in a bid
to persuade the authorities to build motorways
Judging by Dunlop’s interviews
with politicians, they seem to be in denial about the problem and refuse to
take responsibility, passing the buck for the lack of action. There is also the issue of the loss of expertise
due to migration, including engineers.
Before EU accession there wasn’t the money. Now there is, but a shortage of skills
necessary to develop the country’s infrastructure.
Commentators agree there is money
to address the situation, but feel that governments have not considered it a
priority. Fortunately, the Romanian
diaspora is becoming increasingly vocal about corruption and mismanagement at
home so perhaps, Dunlop concludes, there is hope for the future.
The programme is available (at
the time of writing) on the BBC website:
