Earth-moving trucks, concrete mixers kill 24 in one year in Istanbul: Report

Earth-moving trucks and concrete mixers have killed 24 people, including six children, over the past year on Istanbul's roads. 

Such vehicles have become an inescapable reality of the city and appear at almost every street corner due to the high number of urban transformation projects and other construction works throughout Istanbul. However, their drivers often cause outrage for not abiding by traffic rules and exceeding speed limits. 

In the past three months alone, heavy earth moving vehicles have taken three lives in the city, prompting the Northern Forest Defense (KOS), an Istanbul-based environmentalist group, to conduct research on the high number of deaths.

"Earth-moving trucks and concrete mixers have killed 24 of our people aged between five and 85 in the past year on urban roads that they are supposed to be banned from entering. A large number of the accidents caused by the earth-moving trucks and concrete mixers were caused by blind spots that the drivers of these vehicles could not see. For this reason, the drivers responsible were only given low punishments and many of them received no penalty at all," the KOS stated in its report. 

"The authorities should ban all earth-moving trucks and concrete mixers from entering the city apart from at night when there are fewer people on the streets," it added. 

Earth-moving trucks and concrete mixers are actually already forbidden from hitting the roads in Turkish cities between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. and between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m.  But because of extensive construction works upending daily life in all corners of the city, it is possible to see these vehicles at every hour of the day. 

Chairman of the board of the Istanbul Chamber of Civil Engineers, Cemal Gökçe,...