The Tshwane Metro Council is thinking of lowering speed limits in selected areas in order to reduce pedestrian deaths. Will it work? Probably. Would it be my first choice in policy? No – I drive a car to be able to move faster than pede-pleebs (“pede” as in pedestrian, not pederasty). 30 km/h doesn’t cut it.
Let’s idealise and say that traffic law is perfect. All pedestrian deaths must therefore result from an accidental or deliberate contravention of the law. The table below sets out all the violations I can think of…
I’ll run through what I see as being accidental. “Zoning-out” is when someone unintentionally steps into the road, which apparently became quite a phenomenon when the iPod first arrived. “Unattended minors” refers to any time you’re taking something with diminished capacity like a child, dog, cat, or ‘tard for a walk and they get off their leash. “Loss of control” – sudden brake failure; and “crash avoidance” – swerving away from a dove and smashing a biker.
I think the main aim of policy should be to move the majority of pedestrian deaths into the “accidental” column. My impression is that the single largest cause of deaths during pedantry is jaywalking. For instance, Sunnyside is a candidate for speed limit reduction – and every time I drive through there at night I think I’m going to kill someone because people materialise in the centre of its busy roads. Would I stand less chance of killing someone if I were travelling in 2nd gear? Yep. So obviously speeding and drunkenness aggravate contravention of the law either by making it more probable (a drunk is more likely to leave his retarded brother unattended) or more severe (bump vs smoosh a Sunnyside jaywalker), but both already have enforceable limits. My first choice of public policy would be to improve enforcement: fines for jaywalkers and more cameras on robot corners.
Instead this strikes me as the easy way out, a way out in which the actual problem isn’t solved but a status quo is created where the harms might be avoided. When people decide to jaywalk, or speed, or skip a light, it’s because there are no consequences (other than convenience) for their actions. I just believe consequences should be directed to change bad habits, not to limit my freedom to get through town when I’m not a traffic offender.
PS And Hells, as a regular pedestrian, I would love to see some fines for cars ignoring zebra crossings. I have right-of-way, assholes! Though if I used it, I’d end up as stawberry jam.
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Hear hear! I think what annoys me the most about this proposal is that they’d cut down significantly on road deaths by enforcing the existing 60kph speed limit and fining people for jay-walking. But instead they are going to spend hundreds of millions of rands to change a law that probably isn’t going to be enforced in any case.
From a pedestrian point of view: screw all those who have cars and think they must just as well own the world thus demonstrate this by zooming around drunk or not… actually the mook behind the wheel is likely to kill a person even when the robot is Red.