With the start of the winter tourism season, we woke up to a road tragedy that claimed nine lives and left around 40 tourists from different countries, on their way from Cairo to Hurghada on the Red Sea, injured. The mishap was not a good promotion for Egypt as a prestigious tourism destination, especially with all the talk just now about attracting more tourists to the country, while the Government seems reluctant to promote this sector. Egypt has many resorts, tourist villages and luxury hotels, popular with visitors from round the world, but our roads still aren't safe enough for them. Most of the highways to Sinai and Red Sea tourist resorts aren't safe enough, which is why they witness so many accidents. Although most of the road accidents in Egypt can be blamed on motorists violating the traffic law and speeding, most of our highways do not meet international safety standards. Some official sources say 8,000 people die on the nation's roads every year, while more than 30,000 others are injured. These figures must surely put off many potential tourists. Why doesn't the Government use a good portion of its revenues from tourism to turn these highways into dual carriageways and introduce other safety measures? Development of the highways and the enforcement of the traffic law shouldn't just be limited to roads used by tourists, if we want to slash the human and financial losses of these accidents. The same day the tourist bus flipped over on the Hurghada Road, a police lorry crashed on the Ring Road in Giza, killing three police conscripts and injuring 25 others. The accident occurred on the Saft el-Laban Flyover, where lorries aren't allowed to use anyway. So what was a police lorry doing there in the first place?
