Panama Highway traffic deaths at 186 in 5 months

THE CARNAGE ON Panama’s highways continues with hit and run drivers, speeding taxis impaired drivers and unthinking pedestrians involved in 11 major incidents in the last week leading to six deaths and five serious injuries bringing the total of dead in the first five months of the year to 186.

The death toll is far in excess of the figures for a whole year in major cities on the continent with populations up to double that of Panama.
On Sunday, May 31 a 27-year old maintenance worker was hit and killed on The South Corridor, at Costa Del Este.
The same day In Villa Lucre, Guayacanes. Anthonio Carlos Navarro, 36, was killed by a vehicle which fled the scene.
Camargo Benicio Moran, 59, who was killed by a 4×4 while trying to cross the Trans America Highway in
El Ciruelito, in the Penonomé municipality of Rio Grande. Transit authority’s efforts to reduce the accident rate by increasing penalties for traffic violations have been greeted with skepticism, with claims that there is insufficient police monitoring, and that they frequently ignore infractions, and that the raising of fines will lead to a corresponding increase in coima (bribes).