Ringing the changes across eastern Europe

By Robert Cottrell - 16.12.2004 / 00:00 CET

I live in Latvia, which means that I approach the holiday season there with the caution of any sober pedestrian. Last Friday, with Christmas still two weeks away, the police stopped 200 cars in 12 hours for breaking traffic rules at a road junction in the centre of Riga. They found that 25 drivers — one in eight — were drunk, two were on drugs, nine were driving without a licence, while 41 were merely speeding. Small wonder that road deaths in Latvia are twice the EU average per head of population, with only half as many cars. In other words, that approaching car is four times as likely to kill you.

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