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For some days now, weather in Estonia feels like summer. Sadly, accompanied by news of deaths in traffic and by drowning. A yearly inevitability, some web commentators say. The same sentiment is echoed, it seems, by politicians and officials – let’s aim for three deaths instead of five, attaining to the European level. Why so cynical? We should never be reconciled to tragic accidents.
True: year in, year out, the risks remain the same. Summer heat sets people in motion, floods streets with youthful novice drivers – off to the initial independent kilometres at the wheel, perhaps. Or astride a motorcycle. Add the people who don’t drive in the winter, with their lack of experience. It is always said that, around Midsummer Day, traffic is the heaviest. Tender are the nights… with people bound to visit friends. Schools host graduation parties. Lakes, ponds etc draw like a magnet. Alcohol breeds bravado. Should we continue the list?
All this being public knowledge, why cannot we avoid the risks? Why do we have a young man killed in a car wreck, another drowned in a city pond – both on the same day? None of these being a one-man-accident. There always is the preceding party, the friends around. In many ways, the «guilt circle» may be drawn wider. Somewhere, there’s the home and upbringing in the widest sense of the word.
The hopes and the demands for «the state to do something» lead us nowhere. Sure, it is prudent to pour tax money into prevention, education, trainings etc as needed. However, accidents come because of people with their humanity – only stoppable by fellow humans. We may «increase the volume of inspections», «enhance measures» and «penalise more severely» – and this may well help. Still, the surest and safest is intervention by bystanders. Not letting the drunken fellow drive. Stopping the speeding. Halting dives to unknown waters. For we all want today’s companions to be there, for us and with us, tomorrow also, and the day after. And at the next party. Or do we?
Statistics say that in the first three months of 2013, unnatural deaths are down by 60 people or 36 per cent, year on year. Meaning that instead of 166 people, 106 have perished. But statistics like this can never be characterised as positive. Even if a zero is an objective impossibility, we still should strive towards that.
For in many ways, the senseless loss of young lives can be avoided. Would be sad, somehow, to put all our hopes in a rainy and cold summer…