Submitted by Cedric Hughes on Thu, 02/24/2005 - 14:49
The high-quality road system we enjoy functions as well as it does because the majority of road-users are law-abiding. Last New Year’s day, however, reports of regularly observed driver behaviour have raised some doubts. Stop signs, yellow and red lights, no left turn before 6:00 P.M. signs, no right turn before 9:00 A.M. signs, school zone slow down signs were reportedly disobeyed with abandon. What was going on?
Drivers who appear to be disobeying the rules of the road quite deliberately raise many questions. Why do they disobey? —Which in turn invites asking why people do obey the law?
Picture an intersection controlled by a traffic light at 2:00 A.M. There are no other cars. The light is red. Should a driver stop and wait for it to change? Some drivers will slow down then drive on through without stopping. (If you stay up late and go to a nearby traffic-light controlled intersection, you can witness this behaviour). However, if a driver believes that laws are made to be obeyed, then the driver will wait for the light to change. A driver might also justify waiting by surmising that the unexpected could happen, for instance, there may be a hard to see, oncoming high-speed car. Or the driver could say that when least expected, the police are hiding nearby.
Obedience to the law is easy to explain, with one word – enforcement. No one wants to be punished, and at the present time, with an adequate police presence on the highways, there is generally a good chance of a reckless driver being stopped and ticketed.
Disobedience to the rules of the road, is also clearly explained by an absence of immediate enforcement. This is not just an argument based on some sort of political perspective. The simple fact is that a driver who has been pulled over and arrested by police for a serious driving offence, is out of action. Period.
The consequences of a complete absence of police, has been demonstrated more than once in Canadian history, by police strikes. Fortunately for everyone, such events have been very rare. Montreal’s “Black Tuesday”, is described by a discussion group correspondent on www.groupsrv.com/science/ as follows
8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, … Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the
first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of
looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a
limousine service that had competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop
sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and
restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the
day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had
been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million
dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in
the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order.
Road rules without police enforcement mean very little. Be thankful for the police. And please drive carefully.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
