Well after complaining about the safety of Peru's highways for months, it looks like something is finally changing. More information can be found in the article here. But the basic idea is that previously Peru's highway police (State Troopers called Carreteras in Peru) were not empowered/allowed to give out speeding tickets on Peru's highways. There is currently a push by the transportation ministry to make this happen. It is about time.
Normally on Peru's highways the speed limit is 90-100 Kmph, but I have frequently observed cars going over 200 Kmph right in front of the police. I previously blamed the lazy police who were always half asleep in their SUVs. They also did not patrol the highways. They just sat in small towns on the side of the road.
Apparently most all of these problems are caused by the government. The government only gives these highway police a very limited amount of gas/money for each day. So effective patrols are not possible. Also the troopers were not allowed to give out speeding tickets on the highways and they were not equipped with radars (no reason to use them). Finally there are very few troopers for such a large country.
All of these problems appear to be caused by the government rather than the actual police sleeping on the side of the road. It appears that they were asleep because they didn't really have a job that they could do. The only thing they could really enforce were dangerously overloaded trucks and actual collisions.
There are many bizare articles that come out of Peru, but for me this is certainly one of the most 'funny/sad/backwards'.
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I guess the national Police wanted to keep all of the "fine money" and bribes to themselves in the past. At least now the wealth will be spread around and hopefully the highways will be a safer place! Great observation!!
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