ROME – Traffic police in the Italian capital fasten their seatbelts for rigorous medical inspections by military doctors, officials said on Tuesday, with hundreds having cited smog, stress and strain in order to wangle their way out of strenuous street service.

 Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi is gearing up to unclog a traffic-jam list of bizarre justifications, through which officers have engineered exemption from directing vehicles on the roads of Rome, clinging to the comfort of their desk.

 Over 700 traffic police officers, making up 12 percent of the workforce in the capital, have presented medical certificates demonstrating the “impossibility” of working on the road.

 One policeman was prescribed the requirement of “footstool” in the office by his local doctor, thus bypassing the unglamorous duties on the road.

 However, authorities are now ready to sieve through a catalogue of ingenious excuses, calling in military doctors to decipher who has proven physical problems and who has profited from years of negligence which had weakened traffic control across the city.

 Whilst officers some merely claim to “grow tired when standing up,” others need earplugs, suffer from smog and “psycho-physical stress,” or cannot “use of the upper right limb in manual signalling.”

 Traffic police in the Eternal City can hardly lay claim to a squeaky-clean track record. A glance in the rear mirror reveals amber warnings of previous misconduct.

 In 2015, the Rome’s traffic police were swamped in controversy as more than 80% of those on duty for New Year’s Eve never showed up to work, supposedly falling victim of sudden health problems.

 Local police cost over 387 million euros to local taxpayers, although Raggi has made no improvement to the service. The investigation, however, does hope to clear up a further stained characteristic of Rome’s roads as traffic police join potholes and spontaneously combusting Atac buses in a deteriorating system.

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