2023-06-08 18:31:06
The alarming panorama that in recent years has been defining road safety in Spain has been marked by an indisputable mark in 2022 due to the significant increase in traffic offences, especially speeding, and the continuous increase in distractions behind the wheel, mainly caused by for mobile use. Both facts shed light on a complex and challenging road safety scenarioaffirm the entities that make up the Road Safety 2021-2030 platform.
In 2022, the General Directorate of Traffic has registered an increase of 15.6% in complaints compared to the previous year. This escalation in complaints has generated a media debate about what may be a record collection of 507,361,888 euros, but what it really shows is a considerable increase in non-compliance with traffic regulations.
The most widespread offenses continue to be those committed for exceeding speed limits. Radars, both fixed and mobile, registered almost two thirds of the complaints, with a particularly notable increase of 30% in offenses detected by mobile radars.
In addition to speed, infractions for driving without the ITV in force or with an unfavorable result, driving with a withdrawn license, not wearing a seat belt or driving while manipulating the mobile, were also among the top complaints in 2022.
Despite these worrying increases, the data provided by the DGT also shows a reduction in complaints of driving with the presence of drugs in the body and improper use of mobile phones while driving, a detail that should be analyzed with reservations, since the reality reports from the Road Safety Prosecutor’s Office and the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences, indicating that more than 48% of fatalities in road accidents, mostly drivers, “proved positive toxicological results for alcohol, drugs of abuse and psychoactive drugs, singly or in combination”, point in another direction.
“Although the official figures suggest a decrease in complaints for driving under the influence of drugs and distracted driving, mainly due to the manipulation of mobile phones, these data must be approached with caution. Ideally, the decrease in reported offenses would reflect an improvement in the driving behavior of Spanish drivers. However, it could also be indicative of the limitations, physical and material, that traffic authorities face when detecting and reporting these infractions,” he says. sea budsdirector of Aesleme and co-founder of Road Safety 2021-2030.
In this sense, another of the co-founders of this platform, Javier Llamazares, president of the Spanish Foundation for ROAD Safety – FESVIAL-, has also stated “because although the figures seem to be promising, it is worth reflecting on their interpretation, given that it could be observing not so much an improvement in the behavior of the drivers, but rather the limitations in the surveillance and control capacities for compliance with the rule by the Administration.»
Distracted driving continues to pose significant challenges despite official statistics, as it continues to be a significant factor in triggering road accidents. According to dr. Ignacio Lijarcio, Researcher at INTRAS at the University of Valencia, «driving involves perceiving, organizing and coordinating all the information in the environment and giving an appropriate response to each road situation. Therefore, it requires maintaining an adequate level of attention, since non-attention could be present in almost 78% of road accidents, as indicated by some studies carried out by the VTTI (Virginia Tech Transportation Institute)”.
Between 2012 and 2021 distractions have been responsible for a third of road accidents with fatalities in Spain, causing more than 6,200 people to lose their lives and nearly 30,000 to be seriously injured or with permanent sequelae.
Distractions behind the wheel are varied and range from seemingly innocuous actions such as talking to other passengers, changing the radio station, adjusting the navigation device, or more reckless even addictive behaviors such as manipulating the mobile phone behind the wheel.
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