The legislation related to road safety in Armenia will comply with the requirements of EAEU technical regulations, ensuring the unified regulation of road traffic organization. In addition, with the new legislative amendments presented to the government, an attempt will be made to ensure the safety of pedestrians.
TKE Minister Gnel Sanosyan: "We propose to have some new road signs. One of them is the diagonal crosswalk sign. This is for those cases where there is more than 900 people movement per hour, in which case it would be correct to regulate that cars stop on 4 sides and pedestrians can pass not only straight, but also diagonally."
Some changes in road equipment will also contribute to the safety of pedestrians. The minister is confident that the problem of artificial unevenness on the roads will also be resolved.
Traffic expert Artak Khachatryan only welcomes the changes concerning pedestrians. We have delayed one more thing, the expert tells "Radiolur".
"The whole problem is that this practice has been used for a long time all over the world, they woke up this morning and decided to make such regulations. I don't understand why they make such decisions so slowly."
Artak Khachatryan reminds that traffic experts have been warning about poor quality markings for years.
"They invented a new transparent marking. You draw today, it disappears in the morning. The mayor got angry and ordered to do it better. They did, it disappeared in a week. That promise was made by all the Pashonians, but then they switched to watercolor again."
By the way, the problem of cleaning markings did not escape the Prime Minister's attention either. At the government meeting, Pashinyan instructed to approach this issue as responsibly as possible.
"Even the markings of newly commissioned roads are erased after 6 months. This should be excluded."
TKE Minister Gnel Sanosyan assures that from now on only thermoplastic materials will be used for markings.
Referring to the proposed new regulations, traffic expert Artak Khachatryan considers it absurd to replace the "Give way" sign with a "Stop" sign at the intersections of expressways and other roads. He is not sure that this change will prevent accidents.
"That is, in their opinion, if there was a yield sign, the driver entered the intersection and did not stop. Will he stop at the stop sign?" It is necessary to break away from that paperwork and return to reality. It was argued that there is a building on the right side of the road, blocking the driver's view. For that, the person who gave permission for that building should be held accountable, not the signs should be changed."
Artak Khachatryan also considers the change, according to which, in case of traffic jam, if the car enters the intersection even under a green light, the driver should be fined. According to the expert, the only change with this regulation that will take place is the increase in the number of fines and fines.
Unlike the traffic expert, the government is more optimistic. The head of the government is sure that all these changes will improve traffic discipline. He also notes that there have already been significant successes in recent years: the statistics of accidents and deaths due to them have started to decrease. According to the data presented by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Vahe Ghazaryan, the number of traffic accidents and the number of victims and injured as a result of them decreased in 2019, despite the fact that the number of newly registered vehicles doubled in 2022.
According to the minister, compared to 2021, the number of accidents decreased by 6,4 percent, the number of victims by 12.8 percent, and the number of injured by 8 percent.
