Driving it home

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves tells it like it is in an interview for Postimees:

Nothing seems to be able to stop the driving situation in Estonia from getting worse and worse. Maybe there are just too many cars?

It's not a case of there being too many cars - there are too many stupid people. In the 16 years since Estonia regained its independence, 4041 people have been killed in traffic accidents. That's the entire population of a small town. 35,572 have been injured in the same period. That's the entire population of a small county.

These figures tell us that arrogant indifference reigns in Estonia. What else is it if not indifference when someone knowingly gets behind the wheel while drunk, or runs the gauntlet by recklessly overtaking on our highways, or fails to take their foot off the accelerator as they approach a pedestrian crossing, or takes no notice whatsoever of a single speed limit? Worse, we continue to see people boasting in the press about how fast they managed to make it from Tartu to Tallinn.

We'll make no inroads into this arrogance if we leave it up to the police and harsher punishments. We'll only overcome it if we all take a stand against it: show our disgust and intolerance of careless, speeding or drunk drivers. Because they're only ever a few metres away from killing someone. And the tragedy, as we see every day, is that many of them already do.

http://www.postimees.ee/010907/esileht/arvamus/280329.php