The president of the Association of Public Infrastructure Works Concessionaires AG (Copsa), Leonardo Daneriaddressed the growing wave of violent crimes, such as “encerronas”, on different highways in Santiago.
In Daneri’s opinion, the State has the responsibility to provide greater security on the roads. “The concessionaires are responsible for road safety. Every highway, concession or not, every street, highway or road in the country is a national asset for public use. Therefore, public safety in all those assets for public use, the responsibility is of the State, through the Prosecutor’s Office, the Investigative Police and Carabineros,” he said in Radio Universe.
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The Copsa leader pointed out that these crimes are a matter of public safety and not road safety, for which reason he called on the Executive to improve the tools to avoid and prosecute those responsible for such crimes on concession roads.
“The obligation of the concessionaire -which is a partner of the State in this aspect of infrastructure that improves people’s quality of life-, is to finance and maintain a highway in perfect road safety conditions so that users can move at calm, safe speeds and within what corresponds to road safety, that is our responsibility,” he said.
In addition, he clarified that “we are in charge of road safety, we are partners with the State in that and, therefore, we help our partners in all aspects. It is the State that must respond, for example, in public safety and We have a series of tools with which we ensure road safety: cameras, license plate readings, lighting, and all of this we have been providing for a long time to the authorities in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Works, which is the owner of the highways. “.
“Control centers are not enough”
Although his criticism goes to the State, Daneri confirmed that they are working with the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention and other authorities “so that these crimes can be prosecuted on all highways, in all of them there is a control center that works 24/7 , in which there is a policeman always present”.
Along these lines, he specified that these checkpoints are not enough, for which he raised the idea that Carabineros carry out fixed patrols on highways at night. “That police officer is there in general for road and public safety (…) the highways have ambulances and rescue patrols, and a crime occurs, that police officer immediately calls Cenco, which is the police patrol system, so that they attend promptly to the scene of the crime,” he said.
“The best possible prevention is that there are patrols and hopefully with Carabineros shifts, because they are the ones who can combat a trap in flagrante delicto,” he added.
highway design
Faced with criticism for the design of the highways in the increase in these crimes, Daneri indicated that “The highways were designed more than 20 years ago, when the automotive brand was a third of what we have now, this type of crime did not exist. So, if we and the State used public safety and not road safety as design criteria, without a doubt, useless and very expensive structures would result.”
“We have to invest in improving public security, in the prevention and prosecution of crime,” he concluded.
