Cătălin Drulă: "There are 367 million euros in the PNRR for road safety and control"

USR president, deputy Cătălin Drulă, former Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, proposes to the PSD-PNL parliamentary majority the implementation of several measures in the new session of the Legislature, which will lead to an increase in road traffic safety. The USR leader's approach comes after during the summer season there was an increase in the number of road accidents in which several people lost their lives and many were injured.

"In the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, we provided for the installation of 1000 fixed radars, the purchase of 300 mobile radars and 500 video cameras. The project is moving forward. There are 367 million euros available for road safety and control projects," said Cătălin Drulă on the official Facebook page.

The USR leader shows that the attempts to weaken the road legislation must be stopped in the Parliament.

"OG 1/2022 is still in the process of being massacred with trapdoors. The last time we had a low-key discussion with Lucian Bode in the hall of the parliament filmed by the televisions and they backed down. It recently passed again with toxic changes at the Industries Commission. Then it is necessary to adopt the law initiated by my colleagues (PL-x no. 88/2022) which allows the Police to issue fines based on the video recordings made by the dashboard cameras. The draft law still awaits the support of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; I wrote to Lucian Bode in the spring and to Cătălin Predoiu in June, but I did not receive any reply. Many deviant and potentially murderous driving behaviors are caught on private video cameras, but currently the Police cannot issue fines based on this evidence. It is also necessary to reintroduce the road safety inspection for all categories of roads. In 2017 it was issued for category I and II streets, and in 2022 it was also issued for county roads. At the same time, the murderous projects (but perceived by politicians as popular) of widening national roads through localities must be stopped and replaced with modern 21st century solutions. For example, at DN71 Bâldana-Târgovişte, the road is being doubled through the localities instead of the new express road outside the localities that we started in 2021", states Cătălin Drula.

The former Minister of Transport and Infrastructure in the Cîţu government claims that the design of streets must be done with the establishment of conditions regarding road safety and not to maximize the speed of vehicles.

"The street must be designed to protect vulnerable users, pedestrians, cyclists. Traffic calming measures, elevated pedestrian crossings, bumpers to reduce speed, push-button traffic lights at all pedestrian crossings over more than 2 traffic lanes, over-lighting, protective spurs on street corners, etc. are needed. .For the long haul, the solution is what I have been fighting for for more than 10 years: a network of modern roads (motorways, expressways). We are finally approaching 1000 kilometers of expressways. It takes at least 2000 kilometers to reach a semi-decent area to cover Romania", mentions Cătălin Drula.

The USR leader states that the implementation of these solutions depends on the political majority led by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and that the respective solutions can be quickly implemented if the social democrats and liberals want it.