Safe driving can’t be enforced
The stated rationale for the Taipei City police “crackdown” on scooter drivers to improve road safety is both false and dishonest (“Taipei police target scooters in crackdown,” Aug. 13, page 2).
It is false to claim that police intimidation tactics reduce fatalities — if this really were so, then why haven’t the police always maintained a high level of intimidation? It isn’t as if the police will run out of money.
That obvious logical objection aside however, the chief reason why police intimidation does not improve road safety is that most traffic accidents are caused not by violation of traffic laws, but by the criminal negligence of drivers.
There is nothing more important to being a good driver than paying attention to what is happening on the road at all times — a driver who does not pay scrupulous attention at all times is a dangerous driver, even when, and especially when, he or she behaves within the enforceable scope of traffic laws.
For example, failure to check mirrors properly, signaling too late and even outright daydreaming are all extremely dangerous and extremely common behaviors that cannot be adequately reined in by laws.
Merely enforcing traffic laws with more gusto will have zero effect on the behaviors that actually cause accidents.
This being the case, it is hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that the claim that police intimidation tactics actually reduce fatalities is a falsehood. I would gladly examine any statistical evidence that suggests otherwise.
Aside from issues of infrastructure quality, maintenance (or lack thereof) and ownership, the principle solution to the problem of poor road safety must be psychological, in the sense of education and normative pressure toward promoting road awareness and shifting drivers’ sense of responsibility away from robotic observance of traffic laws and toward themselves as fully cognizant adults capable of paying attention to the road and thinking about what they are doing.
Such solutions however, cannot be mandated by law and least of all by this country’s utterly absurd and worthless licensing system.
It is impossible to force people to think by threatening them with violence; it is a responsibility that people have to take upon themselves and encourage in others by social pressure — not the violence of government.
To believe otherwise is to commit oneself to the childishly nonsensical and yet monstrously common precept of mind control.
MICHAEL FAGAN
Tainan
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