Easter’s four-fold increase in road accident deaths were the “final straw” for interior minister, Luís Neves – fresh into his role from eight years running PJ judicial police. He almost immediately announced a new road safety strategy would be coming ‘soon’ – and now we are told some of the details: fines for drink-driving, speeding and ‘dangerous manoeuvres’ will be increased exponentially – and initiatives like ‘police operation stops’ (campaigns where drivers are pulled over and questioned) will no longer be ‘advertised in advance’.
As Luís Neves said when this year’s terrible death toll became clear: “No death on the road is acceptable. It is time for serious reflection. More than this, it is time to act – and this is what we shall be doing: presenting a combination of strategic measures, some short-term, some medium-term, and some immediate”.
The number of people killed at Easter rose to 20 before official counting stopped. Right afterwards, two young students died when their car hit a gas main and burst into flames in Coimbra. Little has been explained of the circumstances of the accident, but the students had been out on the town; it was the early hours of the morning, and their car ‘entered into a skid as it came down the hill’ of a main thoroughfare. It is very possible that excess speed was involved – thus the idea to fine drivers ‘even more for speeding’ is seen as a way of dissuading them from even considering ‘breaking the limits’.
Another plan is to stop ‘advertising’ police ‘Operation Stop’ initiatives, so that drivers are unaware of roads and highways being conditioned by extra controls – and to improve the general condition of roads (as these too can prompt accidents).
Expresso explains the measures are all part of the national road safety strategy 2021-2030, which, believe it or not, is still not ready (even though we are now closing in on 2030…)
The ‘pledge’ by ANSR (the country’s road safety authority) is to reduce road deaths and serious injuries in traffic accidents by 50% by 2030 – and to ‘zero’ by 2050. “To reach this objective, a reinforcement of investment in road safety” to the tune of €224 million is apparently needed (this estimate is in no way explained, albeit Expresso accepts that the objective is “ambitious”).
Portugal’s record in road safety is notorious. A study by the European Commission shows that per million inhabitants, Portugal already has a ‘deathrate’ 29% above that of the European average. Is there a European country with a higher death toll percentage? Expresso doesn’t say, which suggests that there might not be.
In the face of these numbers, the government insists on the necessity to ‘go further in matters that directly influence the behaviour of drivers, creating a safe road safety environment’, says the paper – following up with the fact that this means “complying with rules, respecting other road users and adopting prudent driving”.
Anyone reading the above might pause here, realising that ‘complying with rules’ is the problem: It has been ‘against the rules to drink-drive, speed and perform dangerous manoeuvres’ for decades – and yet all data shows that road traffic offences simply pile up (no pun intended).
“Between June 2016 and the end of 2025, more than one million people lost points on their driving licences. And this number has increased in the last five years, during which 806,000 people were sanctioned”, concludes Expresso.
Nowhere in today’s stories do we read how drivers who lose their licences (usually for a period of months) continue to go on driving, regardless – many of them even driving to the court to receive their licence back again once their ‘punishment’ has been served.
Thus, there can be no ‘lighting of fireworks’ in celebration of this new strategy. It needs to be seen to work.
Expresso adds that the strategy has been “under elaboration since 2020”, and yet six years on, and countless deaths later, we are still waiting for it.
