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Anastasia Balezdrova

In Greece, most car accidents happen in the summer. Each year, the country pays blood road tax with thousands of victims. Many people on the road do manage to escape, but spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. GRReporter talked about the reasons that cause many accidents on the Greek roads and about the ways to reduce them with Thassos Markuizos known as Yaveris – the legendary Greek rally driver who devotes much of his time in lectures on traffic safety and what should each person individually change in himself to achieve it.

What are the main problems in the drivers’ behavior in your opinion?

The problem is only one. In Greece, as in most countries, if you ask the most responsible and the most irresponsible driver or pedestrian what causes the accidents they would answer: the high speed, crossing or moving in the red light, not stopping at the Stop sign, driving after alcohol intake, overtaking at turns with no visibility, driving a motorcycle without a helmet, etc. Traffic control authorities actually are of the same opinion. This is wrong.

These are not causes but symptoms. The reason is the recklessness for only a foolish man would move in the red light, drive drunk and kill his family and himself. When you do not put the correct diagnosis, which is foolishness, you therefore should educate, inform, involve the people and wake up their conscience, but only try to solve the problem with piecemeal measures for the symptoms of the problem, you not only do not solve it but also contribute to its disguise. It is as if your stomach hurts and you do not see a doctor, but take a painkiller pill. It reduces the pain, but it reappears after five hours. This continues, and the pill not only helps temporarily, but conceals the reason which is cancer.

The same thing applies to car accidents. If the system, the citizens and the state do not understand that we have no enough conscience concerning the most important and valuable things which are our life, family and children, and repeat the same mistakes every day, just because we are so used to it, we get to chronic stupidity, which I already mentioned. Therefore, we should declare war on this stupidity. We can fight it only by training the mind.

What kind of training do you mean?

There are very simple solutions. The first is to awaken the people, to involve them in the problem through education and information. Today, we can achieve this with our children at home and through the media. We can show shocking videos in which everyone can see how the most precious thing – the human life - could be lost because of one stupid action, that this could affect his home and family in the most tragic way - with a chest or a wheelchair. We can show the videos with the results from the mistakes that Western Europe showed over the past 40 years and the led to impressive reductions in road accidents. They declined by above 95% especially in northern Europe and countries such as Sweden and Finland. The reduction in Europe is 50% and there is still a 60%increase in Greece. It is clear that the first thing the state needs to do is to introduce the successful methods for improving people's attention. Children should also watch these videos, but mostly their parents so that they could become good examples for them because education is at home first and then it is supposed to continue in the schools. There is also a lack of properly trained teachers and educators to teach the students in the way they would do it with their children.

The next solution is good roads. The state should build such roads to "forgive" the mistakes of drivers and to protect them. In many cases, incorrect actions are the reasons for accidents rather than aggressive drivers. For example, if I make the mistake to go into the opposite lane on the road Corinth - Patras, which is very dangerous and there is no guard rails in the middle, I will kill you. The same applies for the roads in cities. All interchanges and intersections have to be built as well as all the signs that help people protect themselves from one another.

The third is the police presence. The law must be in its place to protect drivers from the few people with bad behavior remaining on the roads, i.e. from tomorrow's murderers. Unfortunately, the law in Greece applies to all drivers, because all are bad drivers and people. I call them in this way because a person who drives in the red light can not be good. The law applies also to the policemen, who do not wear seat belts in their cars, make wrong turns, violate the regulations with no fear that someone would impose fines on them because they are themselves representatives of the law. The training I mentioned should apply to them too. Young people who graduate from police schools and dress in uniforms should be aware that they perform a public task and the people they will face are their brothers and fathers. Drivers, in turn, should remember that the young policeman who stops them is their child, trying to save their lives rather than telling them "Do you know who I am." This is the painfully known Greek arrogance, which is caused by the lack of culture.

I think this is the way to tackle the problem in an organized and coordinated manner. To do this we need a political solution. The state should give a major priority to the fact that so many young people die almost as if during genocide. I say this because 120,000 Greeks lost their lives, 300,000 have become disabled and 2 million were injured in road accidents within 50 years. 85% of these people are under the age of 35 years. This means that we are losing people in the most productive and reproductive age. They had no children, they will have no grandchildren and great-grandchildren and this is genocide. A man of 25 who dies in an accident would not have children, so his Genealogy tree breaks at this very moment.

Each year, we lose 25-30 thousand people because of the accidents, the inaccurate driving on the roads, the decrease in tourist flow because of the warnings that many car accidents happen in Greecet. They all cost around 15 billion euro annually. This is three times the state deficit. If the state could have realized how many young people who will not have an offspring go forever and that if we could avoid that amoun,t we could get out of the supervision of the International Monetary Fund then it could have decided to solve the problem.

Where do most accidents happen in Greece?

Only 3% of the accidents happen on highways. Most of them occur in the cities and the neighbourhoods at speeds below 40 km/h. 88% of the victims lost their lives at a distance of 15 kilometers from home.

The speed ​​of 50 km/h may not be high, but the rules stipulate that 10 m are needed to stop and if a child jumps in front of you, you will run over the child. Therefore, you should move at no more than 30 km/h. At this speed, 5 m are needed to stop, but at 60 km/h, you need 20 m to stop. Therefore, when passing along a school we should not drive at more than 10 km / h because the child playing in the yard is our child. That is why I said, it is a matter of conscience.

People often expect me to tell them a trick to avoid a crash, as if the car is a kangaroo. Instead, I give them an advice, which I think is the most important: I want everyone who leaves his or her house in the morning to go to work not to shut the door behind him/her, to walk through the house mentally for a few seconds and think about how many hugs he/she will get in the afternoon. Is there a bigger incentive than that to come back? It is not a question of driving ability, but of logic and social conscience.

Do you hope that this change could occur?

No, I do not see light at the tunnel, because in these times, people ignore the important things and pay attention to not so important such as our portfolios.

Our children are important and one of the major mistakes we make is connected exactly with them. When a 18-year-old child obtains a driving license, whether his or her father gave a bribe for it, this child is a complicit in the crash that he or she will cause tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, because they give him or her the old car, "to learn to crash." The speed at which a child can end up in a wheelchair is 5 km / h. An old car has no options for active and passive safety and the parents would lose their child for just 4 euro per day. This is the price of a new car in interest-free installments, which the companies offer. Are we not the criminals then?

I have the right to talk about these things because I made the same mistakes. Therefore, I am doing my best to shout in all directions. I feel obligated as a man and in view of my experience as a rally driver. I have three children who are professional drivers too and the fastest ones in Greece. I am afraid when driving on the roads. This should be an example for the foolish, ordinary citizens who say they are fearless, therefore they are invincible, and therefore they are stupid.