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Anastasia Balezdrova

This year, Greece marked the International Road Safety week of the United Nations with 21 serious accidents, 34 accidents in which drivers and passengers were seriously injured and 220 crashes with minor injuries. This is the sad list of the Easter holiday travelling despite the call "all to return" which echoed on all radio stations in the country.

Greece is one of the countries with the highest number of road accidents in Europe. Civil organizations and government bodies hold campaigns and continually raise the fines for violating the traffic rules but the "blood" tax, which the Greeks pay each year on the road, is very high.

GRReporter met with Manolis Stavroulakis, a member of the society of relatives of victims of traffic crimes. For the people who have lost loved ones the term 'accident' does not exist.
 
According to Manolis, in Greece the attitude of the authorities responsible for road accidents is zero. "It is believed that this has been the fate of those who died. Accidents, however, are neither AIDS, nor any epidemic. They are caused by the people. Either the drivers or the constructers of the roads, or the municipal authorities, that place columns and other obstacles could be blamed. All these people have names and surnames, but nobody has been convicted of irresponsible attitude so far.

At the same time, none of those authorities responsible for ensuring road safety is doing anything substantial. Their role is limited to participation in congresses and meetings, which just announce statistics. There is no official in the municipalities to handle this real problem, or if there is one he or she performs his or her duties only formally. These people usually engage in limiting the costs of the municipality in this direction or increasing the revenue from road use without ever paying attention to road safety. So, I think that when the state itself is dealing with the road network at the expense of human life, it is not possible to take any measures for road safety.

Manolis believes that it could not be talked about measures to enhance road safety in a country where the training for driving vehicles is insufficient and many of the people give bribes to obtain driving licenses. "We do not put seat belts, we give bribes in order the car to pass the annual revision, although it is not in the required condition, we pass in the red light, we drive with high speeds. I do not think these problems could be solved only with the imposition of fines. It is all about the attitude of each individual person. If the issue of road safety does not become a problem of the society, if each individual citizen does not realize that he or she could be in the place of the victim at any time, we could not talk about a positive change."
 
Manolis got engaged in the road safety issue in 2005 when his son lost his life after crashing in billboard advertising. In 2008, he and the lawyer Athanasios Tsiokos, who also lost his son in such a crash, managed to force the authorities to implement the law and to remove billboards from the streets. He said that 27 people died in crashes with advertising billboards only in Athens since 2005. "These are data that I gathered myself. There is no official statistics, because there is none. It is mentioned nowhere that a person has died in a collision in a roadside obstacle. It is just written that the victim got out of the roadway and died."

According to the road safety observatory at the Technical Chamber of Greece, 12% of the accidents are due to the outdoor advertising. According to Manolis, three young people died and dozens were injured only in the municipality of Maroussi just in the last few years, and yet "the municipalities continue to place more and more because they profit from that."

"The roads in Greece were full of such billboards until a few years ago, although there should be nothing on the road that could distract the driver. This is said in the traffic regulations in all countries, this is stressed in the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, and this is what the Supreme Court stated."

"But sidewalks are still full of plates that everyone place as he or she pleases. Owners of restaurants and even gas stations place such plates. If we ask a driver what distracts his or her attention the most, he or she would answer that these are the signs at gasoline stations with the help of which he or she seeks the cheapest gasoline. Three such accidents in which the drivers were killed have happened only recently."
 
The fight of Manolis Stavroulakis and Athanasios Tsiokos against the advertising billboards inspired the journalist Manolis Andriotakis to film a documentary titled "Warning: Killing ads."

Before the campaign of the two men, there were 30,000 billboards only in Athens and 150,000 in Greece. Now their society has decided to put a huge stamp saying "SOSte", in Greek "save," at any place where these accidents occur.

In order to see the situation with external advertisements in Europe, Manolis Stavroulakis visited Britain and Scotland in 2006. There were 380 billboards in London then placed at locations where they could not distract drivers. A municipal employee from London explained to him that the country found out the problem with the distraction of drivers in the dawn of the advertising business 30 years ago. So, the authorities banned them and left those few billboards the rent of which is very expensive. "There are ads elsewhere, of course. They are placed on timber structures near to bus stops without interfering with the traffic on the sidewalk and parallel to the road, without attracting the attention of drivers. There are ads also on the buses, but only on the right side to be accessible to pedestrians, not as is here, and on the back of the bus." There are ads at the bus stops in Scotland too, but they are placed out of the sight of the drivers. "In 2005 they made the following experiment: They placed ads with provocative content at the bus stops in Glasgow, but higher than the level at which the drivers see. During the two days of the test the accidents increased by 25%. So, ads showing nude people were banned in Scotland." They acted in the same way in Switzerland and in Germany and in 1980 the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was forced to take action against outdoor advertising, after public protests organized by the citizens.

Shortly before taking up the Prime Minister post George Papandreou has also taken the initiative against the advertising billboards and PASOK was the only party that did not use them for its campaign. After the elections, the Greek Prime Minister appointed a counselor who is engaged only in the campaign against outdoor advertising. A website is even developed on which the citizens are able to send their complaints. The government initiative includes the opportunities offered by the most modern technologies – the citizens can send images of infringement through their iPhone.

After the campaign held by Manolis Athanasios and Tsiokos Stavroulakis two of the largest Greek advertising companies ceased their activities in the country. The owner of Alma Atermon Vrionis Filippos sold it to the Swiss Affichage holding for 64.9 million euros. Together with the shares the Swiss company got ten thousand legitimate places for outdoor advertising in Greek municipalities. However, when Affichage holding decided to start its activities in Greece, the decision of the Supreme Court that the placement of billboards is illegal and the violators could be arrested was a fact. In a report entitled "In the swamp of Greek corruption" one of the most prestigious German-language newspapers in Switzerland, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, described how the eminent advertising company was cheated. Another big Greek advertising firm Master Media moved its business in Bulgaria.