A single strike can be like opening up Pandora’s box. Once the long strike by tanker truck owners was over, they hastened to make up for lost income and in doing so clogged the national highway and every entrance to Athens. Thousands of drivers went from being hostages to the gasoline shortage, to being trapped by the zeal of the truckers.

The question, however, is not about strikes or employees in other sectors working too much. It is about the absence of state mechanisms that might bring some order to this chaos. Everyone saw that in those three to four hours that commuters were subjected to massive traffic snarls, there was not a traffic policeman to be seen. The force obviously did not foresee any problem and did nothing to prevent it.

We can only hope that we will not see similar situations arising in the next few days. But, either way, the streets of Greece are becoming increasingly difficult to navigate and it is the traffic police’s duty to be present and resolve the problems.