Carnage in paradise

Tahitian car licence plates raise eyebrows everywhere in Europe due to the almost universal belief, carefully nur tured by the tourist brochures, that Tahiti is an unspoiled para dise where not only money and hard work but also motor ve hicles are totally unknown.

Sometimes here on the is land, when caught in one of the giant traffic jams caused by Papeete’s daily influx of 15,000 to 20,000 commuters (the total number of cars has now reached almost 50,000), we cannot resist a wry smile.

As a rule, it is quickly re placed by feelings of disgust and anguish as we pass a wrecked car in a ditch or hear the sirens of ambulance and police vehicles racing to the scene of yet another bloody accident.

The local press carry daily horror stories with lurid illustra tions of dead and dying acci dent victims.

The Monday papers, in particular, are not for those with weak stomachs. They record the numerous violent deaths which occur each weekend when drunken joy riders rule the roads.

Tragically and criminally one third of the victims in this carnage are pedestrians, mostly young children and teenagers. Many drivers do not bother to stop.

The official statistics for 1985 and 1986, which are as follows: 1986 Number of 1985 accidents 595 455 Persons injured 792 651 Persons killed 60 46 And 1985 wasn’t the worst year. The most chilling statistics, however, are not the 50 to 60 killed each year but the ex tremely high number of people left maimed or invalid for the rest of their lives.

Although the annual import of new cars and trucks amounts to about 5,000 the import of motorbikes is about the same the injnury rate has re mained remarkably stable: be tween 700 and 800 per year.

This means that the total number of serious injuries re corded in the last 21 years

would be of the order 15,000 one in eight of the Tahitian population of 120,000.

On the other islands of French Polynesia car accidents are still rare though statistics are unavailable.

A side effect of all these injuries is that hard pressed medical staff who work night and day in the government hospital in Papeete are kept busy mending bones and sav ing lives, leaving much less time for other kinds of patients and such things as medical surveys.

Comparisons with other countries with similar densities of cars underline the problem.

In the mother country, France, for instance 12,000 people die on the roads each year 23 per 100,000 population.

In Sweden and Great Britain the corresponding rates are 10 and 15. The New Zealand death rate is 22 and the Austra lian rate has been as high as 30 per 100,000 population.

But Tahiti, with 1985 rate of 55, leaves them all behind.

Tahitian reaction to this new form of “fatal impact” (to bor row Alan Moorehead’s famous phrase) has been mild.

Confronted with daily traffic accidents, many Polynesians have adopted a fatalistic atti tude that it’s the price to be paid for ’’modernisation.”

The loudest complaints come from the recently-arrived French settlers who normally have a better grasp of the problems involved and a wider knowledge of how citizens can obtain redress.

For years the newspapers have been filled with excellent suggestions on how to reduce the carnage.

One suggestion to prohibit the import of high-powered cars and motorbikes which in evitably tempt their owners to exceed the 80 kph speed limit brought the official reaction that this would be contrary to the human right of free choice.

Another question often asked is why there have been so few road improvements since the slaughter began 20 years ago.

This elicits the reply that there is no money available.

Thus, drivers on the splendid four lane highway whose six

miles traverse the hills west of Papeete to the narrow coastal road built 100 years ago for four legged traffic, are trying to empty a gallon bucket into a pint jar.

Local government politicians have many times brought for ward sensible suggestions.

The result so far, however, has been nil. That’s because the power to enact and enforce traffic laws does not belong to the elected Polynesian leaders but to the government of France.

Also, there’s the perennial problem of having too few law enforcement personnel. About 150 locally recruited policemen for Papeete and 200 French gendarmes for the rest of the colony are charged with the wearisome task of catching thieves, muggers, burglars, embezzlers, wife beaters, rapists and murderers. (The crime rate last year was almost 6,000).

Asked by their electors why the traffic brigades are not strengthened, the local politi cians can only answer that they are powerless. All budget in creases for the urban police force and the gendarmerie under the control of the (French) Ministry of the Interior and the (French) Ministry of Defence must be voted by the National Assembly in Paris.

The deputies there are understandably more con cerned with issues in their own constituencies than with prob lems in the overseas territories.

This lack of personnel ex plains, for example, why the painting of Zebra Crossings in Papeete has had the opposite to the intended effect.

We locals know from long experience that, due to the total absence of police supervision, no driver ever stops at these crossings.

There are, on the other hand, always some poor tourists who believe it safe to use them and consequently end their holidays in hospital if not the cemetery.

According to the official statistics the cause of about a third of all road accidents is excessive speed. Yet few checks are made because there are not enough trained gen darmes to handle the single

speed recorder which, moreov er, is frequently damaged by the tropical heat and humidity and has to be returned to France for repair.

Another third of the accidents are blamed on drunken drivers and this might be the cause of twice as many accidents since the speeders are often drunk too.

Again, the systematic con trols which exist in other coun tries are not instituted here.

Why? Once more the answer is that no local officials, including the minister for transport, are empowered to make such sim ple decisions which cost nothing, while the French deci sion makers, for some un fathomable reason, have never got around to extending to French Polynesia the excellent traffic laws that exist in France.

The ultimate cause of the accident rate, however, is that there are too many cars on Tahiti’s single road which in turn is a direct consequence of the immigration-driven popula tion explosion since the atomic test centre was established in the early ’6os.

The most important group of newcomers are the 30,000 metropolitan Frenchmen who, attracted by the general prosperity and excellent work prospects, have permanently settled in Tahiti. (There is every sign that they will keep coming at the rate of 1,000 to 1,500 a year).

As thousands of fortune seeking Polynesians have also arrived from the outer islands, Tahiti is today suffering from social elephantiasis which man ifests in symptoms such as crime, alcoholism, juvenile de linquency, rape, marriage breakdown and prostitution.

For this reason all political parties (including that of Under secretary of State Gaston Flos se, thought to be the most pro-French of local politicians) are now beseeching France to cease flooding the country with settlers and to immediately transfer immigration control to the locally elected government.

The French reply is a flat refusal. And that will continue to be so as long as the islands are needed for the test prog ram. As a result, there is no end sight to the carnage on Tahiti’s roads. Marie-Therese and Bengt Danielsson.