Vaher: Police Must Do More Groundwork in Schools to Prevent Traffic Mishaps
Addressing a spike in deadly car accidents in recent days, the director general of the Police and Border Guard Board, Elmar Vaher, said the police need to increase traffic-safety campaigns in schools.
Vaher told ETV that fatalities and injuries resulting from car accidents are down from last year, despite a reduction in the police force. Traffic safety remains a priority and patrol numbers have not been reduced, he said.
Still, he said, the police should pump up efforts to educate young people. "We have a lot to think about on how to move forward," he said.
"If a child is driven from one door to the next, where will he learn how to behave in traffic, how will he understand the dangers and the risks? What will a child do if parents are working long hours? What computer games are they playing - are they ones where you input a new code to become invincible and stay alive even when a tank drives over you? These and many other questions need to be asked; then things can improve," Vaher said.
The police chief said there continues to be a focus on the problem of drunk drivers.
"We are currently targetedly dealing with catching drunken drivers and removing them from traffic. We stop people on their way to work a half a million times a year in order to catch the 8,000 drunken drivers who are the real killers," Vaher said.
Shocking the country, a recent car accident left four youths dead and one in serious condition.
"These kinds of incidents are of course out of the ordinary. In the general scheme of things the police categorize traffic crashes into two: accidents and crimes. The given case is certainly among the latter," Vaher said.