Óbidos || It was the shock of a lifetime for one driver, and the last memory for another. Rosa Descalço, 63 – described as an ill person on medication – was killed outright when the car she had been driving on the wrong side of the road for as many as 13 kilometres finally came into contact with another vehicle. It was the 57th accident of its kind documented in the last 20 months – but official figures for accidents caused by drivers on the wrong side of the road this year have not yet been released. In other words, the tally is almost certain to be greater.
“I was completely taken by surprise,” 50-year-old José Miguel Costa said of last week’s accident on the A15 at the Arnóia junction near Óbidos. “I tried to get out of the way, but it was all so fast. It was a very violent collision”.
Miraculously, insurance salesman Costa escaped unharmed. “I hurt all over,” he told reporters, but he was allowed to leave hospital “moments after” his arrival, wrote Correio da Manhã.
Also covering the story, Diário de Notícias revealed that police were alerted to Rosa Descalço’s perilous trajectory minutes before the accident.
They set off in pursuit of her car “but unfortunately only arrived after the fatal collision”.
These bizarre situations are all too common on Portugal’s roads, writes DN.
Only days before, a French-registered car was clocked travelling for almost 30 kilometres on a stretch of motorway between Bragança and Quintanilha. Again, roadside cameras alerted police who set off in pursuit – but the VW Golf was never found “because it must have left the motorway”, said the paper.
And in May this year, an 81-year-old man who had left home to buy bread was found over 100 kilometres away, again on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately, neither of these incidents resulted in any accidents.
Studies have shown that it is almost always elderly people who end up driving in the wrong direction – but as Mário Durval of the national association of public health doctors told DN, age is not the only issue. Bad signage and states of anxiety are also to blame.
“Doctors should alert patients to the dangers and secondary effects of medication, particularly when it comes to driving,” he told DN.
