Three-time world champion Oscar Freire and other former top Spanish racers headed a demonstration in Freire´s home town of Torrelavega on Monday evening to demand tougher road safety laws in Spain. There is growing pressure on Spain´s Socialist government to strengthen penalties against drivers who cause accidents involving cyclists, which are widely viewed as far too lax. On Monday evening in one of the central squares of Torrelavega - where the Vuelta a España time trial finishes on Tuesday - Freire made a speech in front of hundreds of sympathisers calling for government action to strengthen the current laws. ADVERTISEMENT Freire was flanked by around a dozen former professionals, including 1988 Tour de France winner Pedro Delgado, Jose Ivan Gutierrez and Alfonso Gutierrez, as well as sports directors Joxean Fernandez Matxin (UAE Team Emirates), Juanma Garate (Team EF-Education First) and Xavier Florencio (Katusha-Alpecin). A similar protest was also made before the start on stage 15 on Sunday. The protestors ended the meeting by unfurling a giant banner, entitled #Por Una Ley Justa [For a Fairer Law], the title of a long-standing campaign to toughen Spanish road safety legislation and headed by Anna González, whose husband, a cyclist, was killed by a hit-and run lorry driver in 2013, for which the driver did not face prison charges. The campaign was backed by a change.org petition, which gained over 200,000 signatories. Campaigners are demanding legislation that ensures drivers who cause injuries or deaths in an accident when violating traffic laws could be sent to jail, and that those who cause accidents to cyclist or pedestrians when under the influence of alcohol or other drugs are sentenced to no less than nine years of imprisonment. They also say that hit-and-run drivers who cause injury or death to others - an offence currently free of penal charges, even when the driver fails to stop afterwards - should go to prison for up to four years. ...
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