RoadPol elects Hungarian officer head

The executive board of RoadPol, the umbrella organisation for the traffic police of 26 European countries, has unanimously elected Hungary’s Elvira Zsinkai as the network’s president, the daily Magyar Nemzet reported on Tuesday.

Zsinkai told the paper she would promote adopting best practices from other countries to improve traffic safety.

She said Sweden, Denmark and Norway had managed to reduce the number of fatal road accidents to nearly zero, which she said could be achieved in other countries.

Zsinkai said the foundations had been laid by adopting the 3E principle of enforcement, education, and engineering, and made a special mention of Hungary’s “traffic boxes” as a best practice. The boxes placed by busy roads may contain a camera recording speeding drivers, but “drivers will not know if there is indeed a camera in the box, so they will slow down,” she said.

Zsinkai also mentioned the practice of the United Kingdom and Netherlands, where cyclists are required to take an exam and obtain a licence, whereas in Hungary “anyone without any training could take to the road”.

As for engineering, Zsinkai said the Scandinavian police routinely informed road managers if technical aspects of the road could contribute to accidents, and the manager could make repairs or even redesign the given section. The system could be introduced in all countries “but this also has financial considerations,” Zsinkai said.

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