Press Releases

21. 3. 20089:16

Thanks To Rescue Workers on D1 Motorway

“I would like to appreciate the work done by rescue teams who helped after the multiple car accident on D1 motorway in the Brno-to-Prague direction on Thursday. Traffic on D1 motorway after the accidents, which involved several thousand people, was resumed in truly a record time.

I would like to thank all the rescue workers for their help. I do appreciate what they did for the trapped drivers. I would also like to thank Mr. Miloš Vystrčil, the Regional Commissioner of the Vysočina Region, for his prompt response and assistance to the crews of the cars involved in the pileup.
The Government is well aware that after years of neglect the technical state of Czech roads must be improved. In this respect, the state owes a lot to the driving public for the past years of inactivity, and the status of D1 motorway symbolizes this sorry state of affairs. The Government wants to improve the situation and that is why it is radically raising its investments into the country’s transport infrastructure.

The Cabinet will keep on increasing investments into roads and motorways despite criticism coming from the opposition. What is at stake is not only the task of improving transport accessibility but primarily to promote road safety and save lives and property of car passengers. I will personally work to speed up the construction of additional information boards along D1 motorway giving data on the traffic and state of the motorway ahead. The first of these should be installed later this year.

I very much regret the injuries and the material damage sustained. At the same time, I would like to urge the driving public to realize their responsibility since there are drivers who often exceed the speed limits, disregarding the technical state of D1 motorway. All the signs are that those were also the reasons for this particular multiple accident, since it was snowing heavily and the surface of the motorway was icy. That is also why the Czech Government has been paying greater attention to road safety campaigns highlighting the consequences of careless driving.“


Mirek Topolánek