The ever-declining governance standards of the SAR government are reflected both in politics and bread-and-butter issues. Though the government has claimed that “nothing is a trivial matter that affects citizens’ lives”, the truth is that it is absolutely unwilling to tackle matters as simple as transportation, as a result of which accidents have happened repeatedly on the same spots. Take the traffic accident that happened at Shatin on Sunday, which killed one and injured seven. Over the past twelve years, 33 serious traffic accidents have occurred on nearby road sections, causing at least four deaths and 160 injuries. Such a high incidence means that the problem lies with the design of roads rather than specific drivers.

After the accident, some citizens, with the help of camera footage taken by other drivers nearby, spotted a car with a double license plate (for running on Hong Kong and mainland roads) running a red light moments before the accident happened. This vehicle was followed by a second car that caused the accident. The first car that went through the red light was the “lucky” one, as it did not collide with any other vehicles. The car following it, however, crashed into a minibus, causing the accident and the casualties. The facts surrounding the incident have to be investigated by the law enforcement agencies concerned and decided by a court. However, the abovementioned footage seems to suggest that the driver that crashed her car into the minibus was simply “following the herd” and ran the red light unknowingly, resulting in the serious accident.

As in the past, it is common for the relevant government departments and some netizens to pin the blame on some absolutely irrelevant issues. The all-purpose explanation of choice is car speed, which can be blamed for every type of car accident. As one commentator once said, “The safest speed is zero.” This way of thinking is the epitome of incompetence and cognitive laziness. The government will then lower the speed limit for the road section in question, causing more traffic jams. This, in turn, leads to more habitual speeding. Unable to enforce the law consistently, the government sprinkles even more road sections with irregular patterns of high and low speed limits, spawning even more freak accidents.

Some people blame those “careless drivers” and suggest harsher punishments. The truth is that heavy penalties will not help improve driving habits at all. Likewise, increasing penalties for pedestrians will not ease the problem of pedestrians’ violation of traffic rules. Our Chinese culture predisposes us to internal disagreements, which we are good at, so when such accidents happen we citizens blame each other rather than demand the government improve road infrastructure. Pedestrians, drivers and other road users (such as bicycle riders) point the finger at each other. Sometimes drivers of different types of cars accuse each other of being the problem.

Then there is every Tom, Dick, and Harry from every organization accusing the others in the wake of every such accident. Ultimately, no one is held responsible, and it is said nothing can be improved. The relevant departments make some cosmetic changes, like reducing speed limits mindlessly or changing the positions of traffic lights. Accidents remain an everyday occurrence. According to media reports, both drivers who allegedly ran a red light are women. But half of human beings are women. Is blaming woman drivers meaningful apart from being discriminatory? Is it constructive?

Whenever a female driver is involved in a road accident, there will be loads of sexist remarks circulating on the Internet, saying “it’s a woman again”. In Taiwan, someone has even created the term “the three wonders on the road”, namely women, old people, and old women, saying disparagingly that they are the “main cause of road accidents”. By this logic, does the fact that two female drivers ran a red light consecutively prove that female drivers have a penchant for doing so, so that they should receive harsher punishments? Or, by the logic of the same people, will these “wonders on the road” simply be made even clumsier by the threat of severe punishments, so that there will be even more accidents? If the problem lies with their technique (failure to see the traffic lights) rather than their attitude (carelessness), does the government have a responsibility to improve the design of roads?

When a string of similar accidents has happened on the same spot, these are not “accidents” anymore. There must be some obvious flaws in the design. To err is human, and there are myriads of reasons why we overlook the lights. Instead of blaming a driver or continually increasing the penalties, we can pre-separate the lanes (for traffic lights with green left arrow signs) or install overhead traffic lights that are highly conspicuous (just like the flyovers in urban areas) to aid drivers and minimize the chance of misjudgment.

Another measure that has been adopted in other countries is the addition of special facilities, ranging from warning words to additional sets of traffic lights, at certain accident blackspots. Such extra efforts are aimed to minimize accidents. If a driver overlooks a traffic light, there are still others that he or she can rely on. Such facilities might be unnecessary to 99.999% of drivers, but accidents are caused by the 0.001%. In the final analysis, it is the mentality of those in power that matters. Human lives should never be treated as numbers merely.

(Kay Lam, commentator)

This article is translated from Chinese by Apple Daily.

Click here for Chinese version

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