Speeders in Drohe: Residents are finally demanding a speed limit of 30 for more safety!

Speeders in Drohe: Residents are finally demanding a speed limit of 30 for more safety!

In Drohe, a small town where serious accidents due to excessive speed repeatedly occur, residents are standing up. Manuel Tiedemann, a concerned person from the neighborhood, is stunned next to a destroyed garden fence and reports on the terrible incidents: "An Audi crashed into the garden fence of our house on Sunday. It could have ended badly," is how he describes the situation. Fortunately, the driver was uninjured.

Tiedemann announces that he no longer wants to stand idly by. He calls on the responsible authorities to measure speeds and introduce a 30 km/h zone. He is particularly concerned about the safety of children and cyclists, who are often at risk in the idyllic surroundings. “We put up a banner with the message ‘Get off the gas!’ to draw attention to the problem,” he explains.

Accidents all the time

The risk of accidents does not appear to be decreasing. Tiedemann reports on several incidents in the past, some of which even resulted in a lamp post falling over and another wooden fence coming to an end. Such incidents are not uncommon in the area, where people often drive at excessive speeds. After Tiedemann has already asked the authorities several times about speed measurements, his answers are sobering: legal requirements and difficulties in setting up speed cameras are obvious.

Similar problems are not only known in Drohe. According to current reports on speed measurements from Austria, there were around 23 million measurements in 2022, with 72 percent of drivers exceeding the speed limit of 30 km/h in urban areas. These even included vehicles speeding through these zones at over 70 km/h, as heute.at shows. One particularly frightening case involved a driver who was clocked at 159km/h in a 30 speed zone!

The statistics speak clearly

The dangers of driving at high speeds are serious. The Federal Statistical Office shows in its accident statistics that excessive speed was once again the main cause of fatal traffic accidents in 2021. A reversal of the regulations is called for: The head of the traffic safety department in the Austrian Road Safety Board is calling for a general speed limit of 30 km/h in towns in order to increase safety for all road users.

Despite the insights and warnings, the reality remains that residents in Drohe are continually threatened by road traffic. Tiedemann is hoping for a rethink on the part of the authorities, so that safety will no longer be good business for transport associations, but rather the right of everyone in the locality.