Ukraine’s roads are deadly.
The past few days have made this obvious. On July 20 alone, two crashes killed a total of 15 people, mainly owing to lax regulation. On July 24, an elderly pedestrian was killed in one car crash, and, in another part of the city, a 10-year-old girl was run over by a 23-year-old in a Hummer.
It is difficult to find official international figures on Ukraine’s road safety, as Ukraine, along with Venezuela and South Sudan, is one of the few nations on which the World Health Organization has no data available. According to Ukraine’s National Police, an average of eight Ukrainians die each day from traffic accidents. But these figures are misleading and too general.
The country’s lack of road safety reflects much larger issues in Ukraine: lack of regulations, poor infrastructure, and a weak court system where the wealthy can, oftentimes, pay their way out.
During the past decade, there have been numerous incidents in which wealthy young people have gotten away with murders on the road. A prominent example is the 22-year-old Stanislav Tolstosheyev, a wealthy businessman’s son, who drove onto a sidewalk and killed a woman in 2016. His case was closed and he never went to jail. Another recent example is that of 20-year-old Olena Zaitseva, who plowed into a crowd of pedestrians on a sidewalk in October, killing five and injuring six. In this case, Zaitseva was arrested after public social media outrage.
It may seem to some that the country’s roads are becoming safer, but the process is too slow. The punishment for reckless driving is too mild and the judicial system is still corrupt. This allows those with influence to buy their cases.
This needs to change quickly, and lawmakers shouldn’t wait until another car crash that takes the lives of Ukraine’s most vulnerable.
