There was a heavy toll of traffic accidents in January 2023, Yeniduzen reports.
This included four fatalities and 56 people injured out of a total of 338 road traffic accidents of which 292 caused damage in one month.
Last year there were a total of 24 deaths and 741 injuries arising from a total of 3,689 traffic accidents.
According to police press releases, of the four deaths which occurred last month, the first was on 18 January on the Iskele-Famagusta road when Tahsin Tilki lost control of his vehicle which struck an advertising sign. He was seriously injured and died the same day.
In the early hours of 20 January, 18-year-old pedestrian Mehmet Raif Koçak, was hit by a bus on the old Famagusta-Nicosia main road. He was treated in intensive care but died on 28 January.
January 27: Hakan Kerek (47), a pedestrian, was seriously injured in an accident on the Iskele-Karpaz main road; he died on 29 January.
Finally, on 29 January, 84-year-old Fadime Ağcakoca, who was a passenger in a vehicle involved in an accident near Kumyalı on the Famagusta-Karpaz main road, died at the scene of the accident.
In an report published by Kibris Postasi on Tuesday, President of the Association for the Prevention of Traffic Accidents, Dr. Mehmet Zeki Avcı blamed poor street lighting and a higher number of drunk driving accidents for the increase in traffic accident numbers. He said that merely fining drunk drivers was an insufficient deterrent.
Kibris Postasi, today, reported that the head of the President of the Association for a Safe Life in Traffic Atila Aypar and Vice President Hüseyin Sevay said that the whole of North Cyprus was an accident black spot.
They said that infrastructure problems e.g poor road junction design and no street lighting were to blame for the increasing number of accidents. Merely installing speed cameras had made no difference to accident numbers and they called on the government to make serious efforts to address the problem.
