Naples, Manfredi: "Motorists' lack of discipline is a very serious matter."

Naples—A hit-and-run driver who struck and abandoned a 24-year-old tourist on the waterfront, a 5-year-old boy struck in the bus lane on Corso Garibaldi, an 82-year-old man struck down on a pedestrian crossing in Aversa and then rushed to Naples: the list of accidents recorded in the last week alone speaks volumes about a city struggling to make its streets safe.

Just as the news is filled with new incidents, Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi addressed the issue again on the sidelines of the Napoli Futsal presentation at Palazzo San Giacomo, using clear words: "The lack of discipline among motorists is worrying; it's very serious."

Mayor's words

"We will continue to improve, taking on board all the suggestions, from speed bumps, where possible, to speed cameras, which are currently subject to very restrictive regulations," Manfredi explained, noting that the administration is working on infrastructure projects to slow down traffic in the most critical areas.

But the mayor wanted to focus attention on the root of the problem: "The real issue is respect for the rules by drivers and citizens. When we have people speeding through the city center at 150 miles an hour, there are no speed bumps or speed cameras that can stop them. So what's worrying is the lack of discipline, which is truly serious."

The mayor linked this argument directly to the pedestrians hit in the city in recent days, at a time when the string of road accidents in Naples and the province appears anything but isolated.

A city that finds no peace on the streets

A quick glance at the news reports of the past few weeks is enough to understand the scale of the phenomenon denounced by the mayor. On the night between September 4th and 5th, a 24-year-old student from Lecce, on vacation in Naples, was hit by a car while crossing Viale Antonio Dohrn, on the city's seafront. The driver, a 19-year-old, fled immediately after the impact and turned himself in only hours later, charged with aggravated motor vehicle injury by fleeing.

The young woman remains hospitalized in serious condition at the Ospedale del Mare.

A few days earlier, on August 30, a 5-year-old boy had been hit in the bus lane on Corso Garibaldi, the same street where, in a separate but still remembered incident, two Ukrainian women had been hit and killed.

On September 6th, an 82-year-old man was hit by a car while crossing the pedestrian crossing in Aversa: he was initially transferred to the local hospital, but was then admitted with a reserved prognosis to the San Giovanni Bosco hospital in Naples.

The list gets longer if we look at the province and the extra-urban arteries: on September 3rd a 26-year-old woman died in Camposano in a collision between a scooter and a car, while on September 1st a 17-year-old, Vincent, died after being involved in a scooter accident after fleeing a police check in Agnano.

On August 26, a sixteen-year-old girl died in another collision between a scooter and a car in Giuseppe Giugliano, on Via Madonna del Pantano. Just a few days earlier, on August 30, a Neapolitan couple, aged 60 and 50, died on the A16 Naples-Canosa highway, when they were hit by another vehicle near Marigliano.

The numbers behind the alarm

Official data confirm the mayor's concerns. According to the latest ACI-Istat report for 2025, 2.670 road accidents were recorded in the city of Naples, with 27 deaths and 3.330 injuries. This figure marks a slight decrease in fatalities compared to the previous year, but an increase in the overall number of accidents and injuries.

Local police statistics also indicate that pedestrians remain the most exposed group, along with motorcyclists, and that the most critical months for urban mobility are traditionally May, June, and July, when the presence of people and vehicles on the roads increases.

Even the analysis of the critical issues in some of the city's symbolic arteries, such as Via Petrarca and the seafront, shows an alarming progression: from 19 accidents with 24 injuries and one death, we have gone to 39 episodes with 31 injured people, a trend that fuels calls for more incisive structural interventions.
The crux of the solutions

Manfredi's message comes at a time when residents and neighborhood committees are calling for faster interventions on traffic lights, crossings, and speed limits, as evidenced by the protests by residents following the accident involving a child on Corso Garibaldi, who called the road "out of control." The mayor, while acknowledging the need to continue investing in speed bumps and speed cameras—the latter are bound by a national regulation described as "very restrictive"—stresses that no infrastructure alone can curb reckless driving, such as the extreme speeds recorded in the heart of the city.

This interpretation shifts responsibility to both a cultural and individual level, while we wait to see what concrete measures the municipal administration intends to implement in the coming weeks to reverse the trend.