First of all, having 0.02% blood alcohol limit (I.e. effectively a zero tolerance) is a good and cheap start.

Next comes the expensive things: Replace the car fleet with large, safe and modern cars. Build infrastructure like pedestrian walkways etc to have few unprotected people in traffic. Replace crossings with roundabouts and rebuild motorways and other high speed roads to never have oncoming traffic (separating railings etc). Have extensive automated speed monitoring, including average-speed monitoring, i.e. multiple speed cameras that time the passage of cars over some distance such as through a tunnel.

Just one comment, large cars are not necessarily safer, and small cars can be safe, too.

SUVs are not only notorious for their awful gas mileage but also how unsafe they can be for the pedestrian or other car they hit if they do.

Absolutely, but large cars are typically marginally safer at least for the occupant. Norway has quite good separation of cars and pedestrians, and cars are quite large on average so in a collision there is a decent chance that both cars are large (e.g. SUV's) and not just one.

Sadly i had to buy an suv for the safety of better road visibility. One really needs to see ahead as overtakings are taking place even when both ways are full of cars and seeing distant events helps my reaction times. I know they pollute more but safety comes first.

Assuming they’re built with the same safety technologies, larger cars are absolutely safer. https://www.edmunds.com/car-safety/are-smaller-cars-as-safe-...

Safer for their occupants, at least.

Not necessarily for the other cards on the road, or pedestrians.

Yeah tolerance is 0% in Romania, and imo the issue is cultural. Overtaking on two lane roads while there is oncoming traffic is pretty common, and so is overtaking in sharp curves with little visibility. There are no mechanisms of reporting such issues to the police, and laws are made such ways that criminals get away with it. A few weeks ago a politician talking on their phone killed two people by entering the wrong way, and guess what? Romania’s legal system put part of the blame on victims because apparently they havent tried hard enough to avoid the collision! Ming boggles.

I'm assuming you can easily pay your way through the legal system in Romania if you have enough cash?

Depends. It is not as easy as it used to be (i.e.: i haven't heard of people bribing police officers directly). However, what people working with / in the police told me is that once they send perpetrators to court, then they start "influencing" either prosecutors, judges, or someone within the chain.

From what I was told this is how it works:

Prosecutors are bribed to make intentional mistakes so that a judge will dismiss a case (called in Romanian "viciu de procedura", roughly translated to "procedural defect").

Judges themselves are bribed usually in high profile cases, and because of the many legal loopholes it is difficult to prove they are corrupt. Laws can often be interpreted two ways, and it's not uncommon that two lower courts give radically different sentences compared to higher courts.

I heard of cases where doctors are bribed so that a sudden serious health issue is discovered so the perpetrator doesn't get to serve time. Specifically related to traffic offences a high profile political figure recently killed two people, and although the guy was initially able to walk on his own, two days later, the individual was shown on a hospital bed unable to move. The media suspects both doctors and the judge will be influenced, because in Romania by law a judge has to establish what is the percentage of fault each party has. The guy was on the phone when he killed a car driving opposite lane, but since he has been injured "seriously" then the victim is also being blamed for ...injuring the perpetrator. Since he was hospitalized it's easier for a judge to say the victim had X% of fault and thus give a more lenient sentence.

Someone I know working for the economic police told me that they are told exactly whom not to verify, because they are known to do tax avoidance, but they "create jobs" (everything has an excuse) so they are to be left alone.

Basically, there are so many wholes in the system that one doesn't need to bribe the foot soldier, they can just bribe on part of the system and they will get away with it. Applies to traffic offences, financial crime and everything else.

Don't get me started to the amount of fraud that happens with EU funding in Romania as that's also ripe with creative ways to rig the system.

What I find very strange is that people really don't like talking about such issues, saying one should not bad mouth their own country, or when the EU raises such issues they raise the "non interference in internal affairs card". If the foreign media raises it then it's racism. There is a small number of people still opposing this, but recently the police has without shame started beating or harassing them. I see no change in sight because the culture itself is predominantly in favor of letting things work as they do.

The safety increase of highway speedcameras is very limited. They help the environment and generate a lot of cash, but in terms of accidents the impact is very low because not a lot of accidents happen on highways with split lanes and only cars. And those that do happen are statistically much more related to alcohol, drugs, tired driving and adverse weather.

In cities it's different, there even a 10 km/h reduction makes a big difference for safety on intersections and with bikes/pedestrians.

Depends on the country I suppose. In Romania doing 150 km/h in a 50 km/h area is pretty common, and generally speaking reckless driving, road rage and a handful of other things where cameras would help. Oh, and the government made it to phone recorded incidents are not acceptable proof in court, unless the recording device is government licensed (needless to say the licensing process is not clear). In countries where people drive responsibly generally speaking, cameras might only marginally improve things, but in Romania it would mean a reduction in the thousands of preventable deaths happening each year.

Why would you put the speed cameras on highways then? Here they are on 50-60km/h roads, some times 70. On faster roads they are only near crossings where the speed limit is reduced.

Netherlands has speedcameras and average speed checks on a lot of highways. Mostly because it works as a good public statement to claim you have "caught a lot of speeding to make traffic safer" while you don't actually have to hire any extra police officers for it.

That's literally all they do in Israel. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars setting up speed cameras on Highways ONLY, and the only effect is increased revenue.

I am from Poland have not been to Norway but I live in the Netherlands. I have been to Romania for work for about two months.

It is mostly driving culture, I noticed in Romania people have to get quick everywhere because of "reasons". They have a car so they feel important. Like "out of the way pesants on foot". There was a lot of bad roads, and romanian people I was working with, mostly complained about roads being shitty. (Taxi drivers driving like Formula 1 drivers, good that we did not crashed into anything)

That said, Poland would be somewhere in between Romania and Netherlands (not sure about stats) but in my impression of driving culture. There is still a lot of people who think "I have a car, I am important, I have to be quick everywhere because of reasons". Infrastructure was bad in Poland as well (last years we got a lot of better roads, so I am happy about that and hope Romania gets their infra a lot better also, or have it built now).

In the Netherlands, no one gives a fuck if you have a car, you are not important just because you drive. Everyone basically can afford a car (not being communistic country, everyone having a car would be quite normal since 80's, I bet Norway also had a lot more people driving since 80's than in PL or Romania) so by any means having a car is not a status symbol (unless it is new Porsche or Tesla). Fines are insanely expensive (at least from what I read it is also the case in Norway).

So basically two things as my take away for this: drivers thinking they are more important, shitty infrastructure.

Spot on regarding "reasons". There is a reason for anything people do bad around here. Literally anything. And your statement "thinking they are more important" applies to pretty much everything and everyone whom improved their situation a little bit: they think a higher standard of living means stepping on others. Really poor state of affairs, and sadly it creates loads of victims, be it on the road or in hospitals or otherwise.

Yes, the fines are expensive in Norway. Driving 101-105 km/h when the speed limit is 70 km/h, results in a fine of around $1200. 106 km/h or above results in loss of drivers license.

Safer cars.

Just look at the huge traffic fatality rate in the USA despite the 'safe' SUV trend.

Better roads & infrastructure (which lead to less car use and slower traffic), driver education, enforcing traffic laws do help though.

Most cars around Romania are German made and used, most recently clocked or written off in that country. But the issue is driving culture and lack of policing I think. Romania had cameras and they were removed, the government claims, because they are against EU regulation. Naturally that's BS, and most laws are made in favor of law breakers not sure why.