Go ahead and violate the traffic rules! 1 200 traffic cops have been reduced to 300 in two years

Increasingly many violate the traffic rules.
A clear example is the statistics of how many are actually driving under the influence of alcohol on our Swedish roads.
According to The Swedish Transport Administration, there are several thousand every day, i.e. more than ever.
The reason for this is that the Swedish traffic police have been diminished since the reorganization almost two years ago.

According to The Swedish Transport Administration, about 70 people die in alcohol or drug-related traffic accidents every year. And that figure is steadily increasing.
The explanation is simple – the risk of getting caught has dramatically declined over the last two years.
Or how do you feel about the following numbers?
In 2009, 2.7 million breathalyzers (alcohol controls) were made on our roads. The same figure last year was 1 million.

The background is the reorganization that began in 2015, which is the largest within the police for the past 50 years. The criticism has been enormous; not least among the police officers themselves.

In connection with this, it was decided that there would not be so many specialized police officers in individual areas.
Instead, every police should be able to know a little about a lot, and thus being able to serve almost anywhere. But few have the time to work on our roads; they have their hands full with making time for handling other crimes and surveillance.

In addition, consider that two years ago there were 1 200 traffic cops in the country. Today there are 300. At the same time, traffic has increased and traffic violations have augmented. This is unacceptable. Something has to be done.

I know that the police have a lot to do, but it's not reasonable to shut down some important parts – especially the traffic monitoring.
It's completely insane. And it will get worse.

The leaders in the National Police defend themselves by telling us that shortly there will be a trend violation in terms of the number of breathalyzers; that they are confident the figure will begin to increase again. What kind of argument is that? The number has decreased by 1.7 million during the last nine years! Of course the number will increase sooner or later.

Furthermore, they are saying that the increased number of speed cameras have contributed to lower the speeds, and that they have managed to fine more speeders. I have my doubts about this, and it will be very interesting to get to take part of those statistics in the future.

However, if that’s the case - that the speed cameras actually are a big source of income – I think that the entire sum of money should to the traffic police. Also, I hope that the National Police will reconsider as soon as possible, and place more police officers working exclusively with traffic monitoring.

I want to see more police officers on our roads.

Photo: Swedish police