APPLY THE BRAKES BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
Road safety was a subject of debate in parliament on Tuesday (May 7) when several MPs raised the matter after the tragic accident in Tampines last month where two people died. In its replies, the government said it had implemented various measures to improve safety including road improvements, ad-hoc enforcement and the use of speed cameras.
It was a useful discussion but I am afraid if it follows the usual pattern after every serious accident, not much is likely to change.
The dramatic accidents that make headline news aren’t the problem – there will always be drivers acting recklessly or making the wrong costly decisions. Thankfully, they are usually few and far between.
The bigger issue is the daily transgressions that happen every day that encourage motorists to act without regard to the law and other users.
Do enough people, including the authorities, care about these acts to do something about it?
Do motorists who put up with such behaviour care?
Here’s why it matters: When small infringements are overlooked, they lead to bigger and more serious ones. Not signalling to turn leads to not doing so when changing lanes or overtaking and to speeding and beating traffic lights.
The more motorists are seen doing so, the more others follow suit because it looks like the norm, and the harder it is to tackle the problem.
Motorists become more brazen because the wrong signals are being sent to them that no one cares.
The authorities need to send the message that the law has to be observed and that there is a cost to not doing so.
More selective enforcement, higher penalties for offenders, using technology such as the red-light speed cameras, more effective training of learner drivers, and more targeted public messaging – any combination of these should help.
What exactly the new measures are is not as important as signalling to the driving public that disregard for the law will not be tolerated and that the penalty for doing so will not be insignificant.
It is time to apply the brakes before it’s too late.
Han Fook Kwang was a veteran newspaper editor and is a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.
