Road Kill is Not the Way to Go
by Increase speed limits, get rid of four way stop signs and permit right turns on red.
Remove street bumps, extended curbs, flower boxes and destroy all obstacles that have been placed as measures to slow the traffic down in the name of safety. The so called calming measures, have the opposite effect.
Distractions because of traffic restrictions
Common sense dictates that no matter what transport authorities impose upon us accidents are still going to happen mostly because of a simple distraction or an urge to beat a pending red traffic light with an extra long cycle… Incidentally most traffic light cycles are geared for business hours and don’t change for quieter times leaving motorists fuming at having to sit through long cycles when no other car is around.
We are human and will have accidents especially if we are distracted or impatient. The more we are distracted the more accidents we are going to have. Distraction is a key element to dangerous driving. Imposing obstacles and restrictions to free movement breeds impatience and increases our agitation making us an even greater risk to ourselves and to other people.
Does one have to be a psychologist to understand our weaknesses?
To reduce accidents I believe the first thing that has to be done is to study the average driver and see what effect all of the present restrictions have on his or her ability to concentrate and drive safely. Is anyone in the transport organization asking the right questions and consequently trying to find the proper solutions rather than relying on the same “calming” hype over and over again?
Safe driving and concentration go hand in hand. A concentrated driver is a safe driver but a distracted driver is an accident waiting to happen.
Where is the logic?
Slowing down traffic translates into more pollution and more deaths from respiratory problems
The automobile is the major polluting machine of our time.
Thousands of people with respiratory problems caused by pollution die every year.
According to a transport en sante report there are 1500 premature deaths every year in the Montreal area alone attributed to air pollution. It’s a known fact also that hundreds of thousands of people suffer from respiratory sicknesses and illnesses caused by contamination in the air. Why aren’t the authorities alarmed by this?
Hundreds of victims die every year on our roads and highways {hundreds not thousands].
Pollution is by far a greater problem than traffic fatalities but it is the victims who die in traffic accidents who get the most attention.
To hell with the thousands suffering from pollution related problems.
In the meantime with all of the attention being directed at traffic at the expense of the sick people it would suggest the authorities are displaying a “to hell with you attitude” towards those sufferers of asthma and other pollution related illnesses.
Slowing down the traffic in its present form will add millions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere. How many lives will this save on the roads or how many people will die prematurely with pollution?
Of course you can ticket a driver but there’s no way you can ticket a sick person who has to stay indoors because of the smog outside. That’s the bottom line. It appears the people in control are deceiving the population, collecting the financial rewards of traffic violations are more important than deaths in society.
Sadly and not very pleasant to the ears of relatives of traffic victims but compared to deaths from pollution traffic deaths are in a sense useful to society. Ask the thousands of victims of misfortune who are waiting months for transplants so as they can experience normal lives. Without transplanted organs these people are just as doomed as the victim of any traffic fatality.
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