In One City, Cops Crack Down on Drinking and ... Walking

Many accidents in Namibia's capital involve drunken pedestrians
By Linda Hervieux,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 6, 2017 9:07 AM CST
In One City, Cops Crack Down on Drinking and ... Walking
Windhoek, Namibia's capital.   (Getty Images/ulesmith)

Police in Namibia's capital are cracking down on a somewhat unlikely group, reports the BBC, following road accidents that are blamed not only on intoxicated motorists but on tipsy pedestrians. Police spokesman Edmund Khoaseb tells the Namibian that people who survive a run-in with a car will be given a Breathalyzer test. He said most accidents happen on the weekend, when "the victims will be coming from bars and under the influence of alcohol, which makes it difficult for them to fully concentrate on the road."

There were 900 pedestrian-related accidents in Namibia last year, nearly 150 of them fatal, per the Namibian. A drunken police officer was charged in 2009 with the traffic deaths of two men. With 2.1 million inhabitants, the country has one of Africa's highest rates of alcohol consumption (though lower than in the developed world), per the World Health Organization. The Telegraph calls the capital "smart, laid back" and known for colonial-era architecture. Windhoek's "lively watering holes," the paper notes, "from now on, are perhaps best explored by taxi." (Namibia is trying radical measures to curb poaching.)

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