The holiday season featured more than its usual share of tragic roadway fatalities. Was defective road planning or human error to blame, asks Gihan Shahine The sun's rays had just begun to light the sky when a bus slipped off the wet, Cairo-Alexandria desert highway, killing six Australian tourists, including a 14-year-old boy and his father. Twenty-six others were injured, four of them critically, in the crash that took place on the second day of the Eid Al-Adha holiday, when road accidents are all too typical. A total of 18 people were killed and 91 injured in a tragic series of car accidents that marred this year's eid. In one of the crashes, a family of four on their way to Al-Minya to spend the feast with family and friends died. Similar accidents took place on slippery roads in the country's northern governorates. The Cairo-Alexandria highway, however, was the most deadly. The bus that overturned was one of two carrying Australian tourists -- including police officers, emergency service workers and their relatives -- who were only on the second day of a "holiday of a lifetime". 56-year-old Australian businessman Luciano Prenner was among those who lost their lives; he never got to fulfill his lifelong dream to "explore how the Pyramids were built". Police are still investigating the causes of the different accidents. The tour bus driver told authorities he lost control of the vehicle when he swerved to avoid a patch of water on the road; according to the tour operator who was seated in front of the second bus, however, the driver was trying to overtake the second bus when he swerved to the right and lost control of the steering wheel. Burst tyres, speeding and defective road planning were amongst the causes of the other accidents, which are only the latest in a flood of crashes that claim the lives of an estimated 5-6000 people every year. Road accidents are the second most frequent cause of death in all Third World countries. In Egypt, for every 100 million kms driven, 43.2 people die, compared with 0.9 in Australia, for instance. Accident specialists maintain that more than 50 per cent of the victims are in their mid-20s, and that one-fifth of children between one and five-years-old who die in hospitals are accident victims. Financial losses caused by traffic accidents -- estimated at LE1 billion a year -- include damaged vehicles, health care, hospital fees and lost working hours. The rise in accident fatalities has also inspired a plethora of questions about road planning. A recent Transport Ministry study attributed the recent surge in highway accidents to defective road planning, as well as speeding and a general absence of proper traffic control mechanisms. Featuring at least 37 of the 150 blackspots that mar Egypt's highways nationwide, the Cairo-Alexandria highway proved the most notorious in this regard. According to the study, the road -- which brings in LE150million in toll revenue (the nation's highest) per year -- would require at least LE1 billion in repair work to meet proper traffic planning standards. "Egypt does not have highways in the true sense of the word," lamented urban planner Abdalla Abdel-Aziz. "A highway should be built according to international building codes, which either don't exist in Egypt or are totally ignored." Ain Shams University urban planning professor Issa Sarhan said there was "a complex set of factors behind road accidents that cannot all be blamed on defective road planning." He pointed to the fact that the accident rate continues to rise, despite the government's spending an average of LE200-300 million on road maintenance and highways. Instead, Sarhan blames speeding, drivers' misconduct and a general lack of traffic awareness. Abdel-Aziz, however, insisted that all highways should be well paved, furnished with three lanes on each side, and devoid of any intersections -- rare conditions on the road. Many Egyptian highways, for instance, are built in areas with villages on both sides. The resulting traffic flow -- from pedestrians and cattle crossing the road, to defunct open-bed trucks overloaded beyond safe levels -- often creates a deadly mix. A near consensus does exist among urban planners that desert roads are poorly designed and unevenly paved. Specialists suggest more cat's eyes and traffic lights, as well as increased availability of rescue stations and telephones. Abdel-Aziz suggests highways should be built using cement concrete to guarantee a safer and more even surface, with special lanes and speed limits for heavy transport vehicles. According to Sarhan, these types of suggestions were part of long- and short-term plans that "actually never saw the light". As such, he suggested that a "professional committee involving the different concerned parties should be formed to follow up on [these] plans and suggestions, and bear the liability in case accidents occur." For Abdel-Aziz, the key to resolving the problem lies in the development of a real master plan for Egypt's road network and traffic flow. If that's not high up in the government budget priority list, he said, "accidents will continue to wreak ever increasing financial and human losses."
