THREE local graduates have put together a campaign to reduce the number of deaths among young people in the Algarve. Their scheme, called You Enjoy, We Drive, involves a free bus ride home for clubbers.
Between now and August 15, partygoers in Albufeira and Vilamoura will be able to go out clubbing, then be picked up in a bus and taken home for free. There are currently four buses circulating from Praça dos Touros in Albufeira and Trigonometria in Quinta do Lago every 45 minutes between 12am and 9.15am. “We started our campaign in August 2003 and, since then, the death toll and accidents on the roads have gone down,” said one of the graduates. Statistics show that, in August 2002, there were 119 deaths on the Algarvean roads – this dropped to 98 in August 2003. “We hope to keep the number down,” he said.
FACT: The death toll on the roads among young people in Portugal, aged between 20 and 24 years, is currently 29 per cent higher than the European average.
