Un regalo para Lucy

Meet Winston. He should be good enough to get her through the streets of Setubal. Unfortunately too wide for Casares.

I've ridden in this very behemoth some years ago. Vision is a bit poor, but frankly it's an advantage not to see the car you've just run over and crushed.

Fuel economy is poorer, at about 8 mpg max on four-star only.

Comfort is basic, but then you're so padded out with helmet, gloves etc. that the extra layers absorb the bumps.

Por fin arreglado

I've finally managed to fix the Sammy after the rear propshaft parted company with the rest of the vehicle some weeks ago. Silly me didn't realise that the vibration caused by the incident had sheared two out of the three transfer box mountings (you can see one top right). This resulted in mucha vibración in low gears. 27 euro from the Suzuki dealership in Algeciras sorted it - Muchas gracias chicos.

Como contar los muertos

One innovation on the roads this summer has been to put up multilingual messages on the Variable Message Panels above the road. Here in Andalucía they are in Spanish and English! The thrust of the summer campaign is to try and reduce the road death toll by policing speed in particular, although the message used is by having the road death toll from 1 January updated daily - it makes sobering reading:

Day 1 (Aug 10): 1658 dead

Day 2 (Aug 11): 1668 dead

Day 3 (Aug 12): 1682 dead

Day 4 (Aug 13): 1699 dead

Of course, speed in itself does not cause accidents, it's the nut behind the wheel that does, but also by driving too close behind, drink/drugs driving, suicidal overtaking manoevres. All of these can be seen several times a day here, and these go unpunished.

Seguridad vial

One of the problems with Spain is that they love their road signs so much they don't take them down when redundant - trouble is I don't know which one is older, they look like they were put up at the same time.

No han aprendido nada

Crazy driver behaviour still seems to abound in spite of points-based licences. Witness this little set-to in La Línea.

La forma española o británica - tú decides

Law enforcement - English vs. Spanish (link repaired). No prizes for the version I prefer.

The Spanish version is the Policia Nacional in Seville. Interesting that they consider their machines fairly expendable in the pursuit of criminals.

316 fallecidos menos en 2006

Yesterday saw DGT publish the road safety statistics for Spain for 2006. As mentioned in previous posts the introduction of the points-based licence in July has had a significant effect in reducing road deaths (though slight injuries were up on last year).

The headlines of the report are:

• The number of road deaths has fallen by 9.5%.
• In 2006 there were 2,630 fatal traffic accidents in which 3,016 people died.
• The number of deaths on Spanish roads is the lowest since 1969, when there was one-seventh the number of vehicles on the road.
• Since the entry into force of points-based licensing, road deaths have fallen by 15%.
• In the last three years the number of dead has fallen by more than 1,000, a 25% fall.
• The number of deaths per million vehicles was 104, 56 less than in 2003.

This would translate into a road death index of 68 deaths per million population. Compare that figure to this chart (in pdf) of Europe for 2005.

All that progress with only 500 speed cameras in the entire country. Also, there are significantly more traffic police out there than in the UK where road deaths are rising in spite of 5,000+ speed cameras.

Solo un fallecido en las carreteras andaluzas el pasado fin de semana

What shocks me about this story is that the unfortunate person was a policeman on traffic duty.

This is the second time in a fortnight that a traffic officer has been run over in Spain. The common factor between the stories seems to be that both were directing traffic through temporary diversions for other accidents. It's almost like Spanish drivers have a lemming instinct, when one accident occurs, the risk of another in the immediate vicinity skyrockets.

Please be careful out there this Christmas.

Nuevos resaltos de velocidad

A fantastic idea from Denmark to control speeding.

Speed related accidents are still high in Spain and the initial reduction in fatalities from the new licensing system is starting to wear off. Time for another radar gun campaign from the Benemérita.