Eyes on the road

Monday, August 7, 2006 at 1:48 | Posted in Estonia, Legal, traffic, USA | Leave a comment

It is against the law in this country to drive while tired. It is also illegal to talk to a cell phone without a hands free equipment or send a text message while driving. Fastening your seat belt is mandatory. It is also against the law to drive drunk or drugged. Our good neighbours in Estonia have similar road traffic laws.

A few weeks ago an Estonian cabinet minister interrupted his well deserved summer vacation for a day and drove to the capital Tallinn from his summer cottage on the Baltic sea island of Saaremaa. He had a busy day in the capital including a cabinet meeting.

Done with the government business, minister Raivo Palmaru jumped on his car and started to drive back to the island to continue his vacation. It is reasonable to assume that he must have been tired after a busy day. The police inquiry after his accident established that he had no alcohol or traces of other intoxicating stuff in his blood.

Why exactly he drove into a ditch is uncertain but the possibility that he may have momentarily fallen asleep seems plausible. Luckily, nobody else was around and equally luckily for the minister, his seat belt was fastened. He got some scratches and was obviously shocked but basically he made it unhurt.

Mati Jostov was not as lucky as the minister. He was one of the most prominent business men in Estonia. He was the chairman of a major fuel producing corporation. The company’s assets are in the area of 130 million € and they made a net profit of well above 8 million € last year.

Mr. Jostov was driving to the office early the first morning after his vacation. He had a similar accident as minister Raivo Palmaru a couple of weeks earlier. His seat belt was not fastened. He would have been 48 next month. He had a wife and three children.

I think that most of us would agree that these two incidents were both accidents in the human context of the word. One of them was an accident with a tragic outcome, the other what we could call an accident with a lucky outcome. There is no need to make a legal evaluation of these two accidents since there were no other victims than one of the drivers.

Jon Barnhardt writes about another car accident in the USA. In the case he describes, the driver survived but an innocent member of public died. I agree with Jon that it can not be described as an accident in the legal context of the word.

I agree that it does not matter for the family of the young lady whether she died because of a drunk driver or because somebody was driving while tired. Having said that, I still think that a tragic accident caused by an intoxicated driver should be punished harder than one caused by a tired driver, assuming of course that there were no further elements of criminal negligence in the case. But it should be punished because nobody should drive when they are tired.

Unfortunately, there will always be tragic road traffic accidents, no matter how tuff the laws are. Estonia has an adequate legislation but it did not stop these two accidents involving two celebrities. But those laws do make a difference.

Also, the less anybody drives, the smaller chance there is for somebody getting killed on the roads. If you have no option but to drive, go ahead but please be careful out there. Keep your eyes open and on the road.