TMM,Tuesday 1 March 2011
Mobile camera crews can also deter street crimes
The Director-General of Road Safety Department recently gave a clear and appropriate reply to a letter questioning the need for emergency lanes.
Datuk Suret Singh had reiterated that there must be continuous efforts to educate motorists that such lanes are meant for emergency vehicles only, and those caught using them illegally would be fined.
However, such measures have proven to be inadequate. If the authorities were going to dish out more of the same, the frustrations of motorists would unlikely end anytime soon.
By now, it should be common knowledge that compound fines have no deterred motorists from committing traffic offences. Millions of summonses have been issued with over 18 million remaining unpaid
Soldiering on with the current methods would continue to produce dismal results. Nothing less than a bold transformation can bring about the necessary changes.
Nevertheless, motorists should be given leeway, as some offences can be easily committed under extenuating circumstances.
One can be inadvertently caught in a yellow box when the flow of traffic halts abruptly, or jumping a red light when tailgated by another vehicle.
When a vehicle, especially a lorry, is “charging” behind you a high speed, it would be suicidal to step hard on the brakes just to stop before a light turning red.
On the other hand, the act of driving on the emergency lane is deliberate and inconsiderate. The only way to drive home the message to such hard-core offenders is to suspend their driving licences for a short period and make them attend a lecture.
Whenever congestion starts to build up, most motorists would initially keep to their lanes, except for some who are quick to switch.
In bumper-to-bumper traffic, many would wait patiently while some may curse at those gleefully zooming past them using the emergency lane.
However, it does not take long for many drivers to reach their breaking point when crawling in endless start-stop traffic, or waiting indefinitely in a gridlock.
Even those who are normally patient may not be so if someone is tired, sick, hungry, thirsty or has to answer the call of nature.
Just like a stampede, it will soon explode into a chaotic situation with vehicles scrambling to escape through whatever opening available, on and off roads.
No amount of education or training would be able to stop subsequent waves of motorists using the emergency lane. Prolonged inaction by the authorities triggers such mass transgressions.
We should no longer accept the standard answer that “lack of enforcement is due to manpower shortage” or “enforcement officers cannot be stationed everywhere”.
I have advocated since 2003 that the surveillance part of enforcement can be privatized without compromising the authority of the various enforcement agencies.
Companies can be appointed to train and manage camera crews to record traffic offenses. The enforcement agencies pay for clear evidence and it would be up to them to issue summonses.
The camera crews are to don bright uniforms and operate at selected roadsides or junctions. They would be a welcome sight to the majority of law-abiding motorists.
The public will finally get to see that justice is served on those who have previously got away with impunity.
This manual system is superior to static cameras, which do not deter but merely record offences after the act. Moreover, the government does not have to spend millions of ringgit installing and operating static cameras.
Apart from traffic offences, these camera crews can also record those caught in the act of illegal dumping, open burning and also smoky factories or vehicles.
Best of all, their presence would deter street crimes such as snatch thefts, as their cameras can be pointed at any direction by the mobile crew.
YS Chan
Kuala Lumpur
No comments:
Post a Comment