By Eric J. Lyman
ROME, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- Italy's capital is solidifying its status of one of the deadliest cities in Europe for pedestrians, with poor infrastructure, inadequate public transport, a lack of law enforcement officials on the streets all contributing to a high death toll.
Statistics vary depending on how accidents are recorded. But the Italian media has reported that Rome has seen at least 1,300 road accidents involving pedestrians so far this year, leaving at least 43 dead.
Report said that the total number of accidents has risen each of the last four years. On just one weekend in October, for example, three separate accidents in Rome took a pedestrian's life each.
ISTAT, Italy's National Statistics Institute, reported that the rate of increase of road deaths for Lazio, the region that includes Rome, is in the middle range compared to other Italian regions. But the percentage of accidents that involve at least one death -- more than 6 per 100,000 people last year -- is among the highest in Italy.
"No doubt that Rome is a more dangerous city than it should be and more dangerous than other cities of similar size in industrialized countries," Alfredo Giordani, vice-president of Rome's Citizen's Council for Road Safety, told Xinhua.
Generally speaking, roads around the world -- including those in Rome -- are by most measures safer today than they were one or two decades ago, due mostly to improvements in automobiles. But the situation in Rome has improved slower than in most big cities, analysts told Xinhua.
"There is no single way to reduce the number of fatalities dramatically," Gianluca Di Ascenzo, president of Codacons, a consumer advocacy group, said in an interview. "The unique problems Rome has have been getting worse for years. They can't be reversed from one day to the next."
Both Giordani and Di Ascenzo said the most step the city government can take is to put more police officers on the streets.
"More police would mean pedestrians would be more likely to use crosswalks, drivers would drive slower, and cars would be less likely to double park, which creates obstacles for drivers and can force pedestrians to walk in the street," Giordani said.
Angelo Bonelli, president of the Italian Green Federation, a political group that lists road safety among its central priorities, said Roman culture is part of the problem as well.
"The fact that there is little enforcement on the streets and few fines means that Roman drivers can do as they please, whether that is double parking, ignoring traffic signals, driving fast, and that makes it dangerous for everyone," Bonelli told Xinhua.
"Sometimes it can seem like the wild west out there," Bonelli said, referring to the United States frontier in the 19th-century, when there were few rules.
Di Ascenzo said other steps would also help, including more incentives for would-be drivers and pedestrians to use public transportation or carpool, as well as better maintenance of roads.
"When the streets are full of potholes a driver can feel like he or she is running an obstacle course," Di Ascenzo said. "That makes it more difficult to see a pedestrian crossing the road."
Giordani said Rome needs more roundabouts, which studies say forces traffic down.
Bonelli said the high number of traffic accidents combined with many of the factors that contribute to them like poor maintenance on roads, bridges, and other infrastructure are hurting Rome's image as a top destination for travelers.
"It's a terrible shame, but people who live in Rome and those who might come to the city don't look at Rome in the same way they used to," he said.
