Residents of the Negev are demanding what they see as the bare minimum: life-saving infrastructure for Route 40, which has seen two fatal accidents in the last month alone.
Dozens of residents from Mitzpe Ramon, Midreshet Ben Gurion and the Ramat Negev Regional Council met at the local community center last week to establish "Ne’Avekim (Fighting): The Campaign To End the Killing on Route 40.” This comes after a staggering 500 accidents on the road in the last decade, 61 of them fatal.
"The road in the southern part, near the Negev intersection to Mitzpe Ramon, is an unmaintained road," said Omer Bret, a member of the community of educators in the Dror Israel movement, who opened the meeting. "We must act to increase the value of human life and equal human value in the Negev region and in the public discourse, otherwise the road will not be repaired for the next 15 years."
Bret presented data collected on the level of danger of Route 40. Mitzpe Ramon is one of the three communities with the highest percentage of fatalities in Israel relative to the number of residents, according to the data he presented. 25% of the accidents in this section are fatal accidents, while the national average is 2%.
Additionally, according to an inspection the group conducted, there is no enforcement by the traffic police and no speed cameras are installed in the region in question.
Despite this alarming data, the Ministry of Transportation has no intention of investing in the renovation of the road in the upcoming two-year budget. This is in spite of the increasing number of vehicles traveling on Route 40 due to the closing of the airport in Eilat and the establishment of the Ramon airport, and the growth in private vehicles in Israel.
"We decided to start a fight to make the road safer," said Shalom Danoff, a member of the campaign team. "Accidents will continue to happen, but if the road is two-lane, lit and has a concrete separation fence, then the danger of the accident will be reduced by 50%."
At the meeting, a long-term goal was presented to renovate the road up to Mitzpe Ramon and make it two-lane. "When they established the army base at HaBehadim, the Ministry of Defense put its weight behind it and the entire road became two-lane, up to the entrance to the base," Danoff said.
The members of the campaign are not satisfied with the bureaucratic wait time and are planning a series of meetings and action plans with the Ministries of Finance and Transportation. This will provide accessible and cheaper solutions such as placing traffic lights, road signs, increasing enforcement and paving detour routes.
"It's a long struggle, but every year we manage to shorten the bureaucracy, we save lives,” Danoff emphasized.
As mentioned, Mitzpe Ramon leads the list of cities with fatalities from road accidents. On this year’s Yom HaAtzmaut, Maayan Domanovich, a baby, was killed on Route 40 in a head-on accident. Three weeks ago, Shahar Cohen Braun, an educator and a Mitzpe Ramon resident, was killed at the Midreshet Ben Gurion intersection.
You can join the fight on the Facebook page.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Noah Mirkin.
