Government sets up "team" in bid to improve traffic safety

Government sets up "team" in bid to improve traffic safety

BELGRADE -- The Serbian government has formed a team for coordination of road safety tasked with improving traffic safety and reducing the number of accidents.

The team, headed by Zorana Mihajlović, deputy prime minister and minister of construction, transport and infrastructure, will draft a national strategy for traffic safety and a plan for its implementation, the Serbian government's press office released in a statement.

The Road Traffic Safety Agency called on Wednesday on all young people, and particularly drivers, to observe the traffic regulations, stressing that 54 young people, aged between 15 and 30, have died in road accidents since the beginning of the year.

The Agency underlined that as many as 2,707 young people have been injured in traffic accidents since the beginning of the year.

In the previous two years, a total of 292 young people lost their lives on the Serbian roads, while 11,558 were injured.

The Agency said in the release that the traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for young people aged from 15 to 30.

“We have witnessed tragic events that have claimed the lives of young people in Novi Pazar, Kraljevo, Cacak, Sabac and Novi Sad. The most common reasons of the accidents are speeding, disregard of the right-of-way and drunken drive,” the statement reads.

The Agency has warned that traffic is expected to thicken, and called for greater vigilance of all participants in traffic during the period of hot weather.

In 2012, then Interior Minister Ivica Dačić said that "a town" had perished in traffic accidents in Serbia over the previous two decades.