After yet another person was fatally run over, this time a 16-year-old girl, in Lisbon, when - according to the news - was crossing a crosswalk with his bicycle in his hand, MUBi demands that the government and the competent authorities take urgent and consistent measures to effectively reduce the road dangerand an end to vulnerable users being run over on Portuguese streets and roads.
Following Petition "For the Right to Cycle Safely" with approximately ten thousand subscribersThe Assembly of the Republic about a year and a half ago, unanimously decided to recommend to the Government the adoption of road risk reduction measures for vulnerable users. These include,
- the creation of an inter-ministerial working group to launch and coordinate the implementation of measures to this end;
- strengthening education and awareness-raising activities for road citizenship and the protection of the most vulnerable users;
- stepping up road checks on dangerous behavior towards vulnerable users;
- collaboration with municipalities to create more low-speed zones in Portuguese cities.
To these strong and urgent recommendations made in unison by the representatives of the Portuguese people in the national parliament, the government still hasn't given an answer.
The highest competent authority in Portugal on these matters, the National Road Safety AuthorityThe European Commission is still mired in the obsolete paradigm of dependence on excessive car use, insisting on victim-blaming campaigns and unwilling to tackle road risk at its source: excessive use of individual motorized transport and dangerous driving behavior.
Portugal has one of worst rates in Europe road accidents within the localities. There is still a huge lack of political will on the part of Portuguese municipalities to discourage car use in cities, to reduce motor vehicle speeds, to reverse the usurpation of urban space by the automobile and distribute it more equitably, and to dignify and protect the most vulnerable users of public space.
If, after every hit-and-run or other road disaster, we tend to try to pin the blame on one of the parties involved - the person who didn't obey the signal, the person who didn't keep to the speed limit, the distracted pedestrian, etc. - the responsibility for public policies and the planning and design of urban roads almost always dies alone.
Lisbon, like many other Portuguese towns, has or is developing a Municipal Road Safety Plan, but nothing concrete is happening.
A city that continues to favor and encourage the use of cars, that maintains roads that encourage murderous speeds and that does not systematically combat speeding with traffic calming measures, cannot shirk its responsibility. Footage of the crosswalk and speed measurements at the scene, three days after the accident, show that motorists continue to accelerate at red lights and numerous driving well above the speed limit.
When society is demanding environmental sustainability and the humanization of cities, the car continues to be king and master and to kill those who, out of necessity or choice, use more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable modes of travel. Until when?
This Thursday, July 16, at 7pm, in Campo Grande, next to the Lisbon City Hall building where the young woman was hit by a car, nearly two dozen civic organizations and movements and bicycle user collectives are organizing a vigil demanding security for vulnerable users Vigils in several other Portuguese cities are scheduled for the same time.
