ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES AND DRIVING IS NO EXCEPTION!

Driving! What do we say driving is? What do we understand when someone says drive?!

I understand driving to basically mean, movements to point B from point A, while sitting in a large box which we can call a vehicle, used as a means of transportation of people or goods, or services; usually, powered by engines or motors and even animals.

I want to assume that we already know the fundamental reasons to drive, since no one can remain in one spot for all their lives. We must move from one place to another, at one point in our life or the other. Now, what are the guidelines and codes of conduct for driving? Well, perhaps we know them or at least, we think we do. If we know them, why then are outrageous numbers of road accidents with fatality recorded each year, on our roads?

For me, I would say it is due to a myriad of things, foremost of which is the growing population, especially in the cities where unavoidably, more people are on the roads every day, and if there was an accident a large number of people was bound to be involved. It could also be that we do not know and do not practice driving guidelines as well as we should.

In my time of driving lessons, I saw how easy and at the same time how difficult driving could be. I learnt that getting comfortable on the wheels did not mean that I could just hop onto the road in the name of driving and just because I could turn a wheel and push against some pedals! That definitely did not make me a driver. There were road usage rules and etiquette that I was yet to fully learn and understand.

Sadly, not everyone has the patience to learn. I am convinced that that is one of the major reasons humanity is where it is today, as regards driving.

There was an incident that took place one day, on my way to my football (soccer) training. My dad was with me and we saw an instructor of a driving school with his Learner on the road. The instructor was in the car and the Learner was driving against the traffic, that is, driving on a one-way road against incoming traffic. My dad went to ask the instructor why he would instruct the Learner to drive the wrong way, against incoming traffic; and to caution them. To my dad’s amazement, the instructor said that they were given permission by the Road Safety Agency to use that road to learn driving. My dad and I observed that the road was not a busy road, but they were driving against traffic and that was both dangerous and wrong. My dad opined that they could not guarantee that any oncoming vehicle could actually see them. The oncoming vehicle, knowing it is a one-way road would be coming freely and in speed; by the time the vehicle would notice them (the instructor and his Learner) the distance would be too short to detour or use the brakes, and then there could be a head-on collision! Besides that, at times brakes fail. My dad further warned that he would not hesitate to report their dangerous activity to the Road Safety Agency if they did not take correction. My dad added that the Road Safety Agency may have given permission to use the road, but not to misuse it the way they were! The instructor still did not listen. My dad and I eventually left them and went our way; and I thought to myself, “that is a driving school and it is directly or indirectly teaching its students to drive against traffic!”.

This is just one of thousands of examples, and when these students learn and are given licenses, they do the same thing on the roads and cause accidents. Who is to blame, the newly licensed driver, the school that taught him/her, or the agency that gave the permission that the driving school could use a one-way road wrongly, for driving lessons? These are rhetorics begging for answers.

We all have to play a part if we want safer roads, because the change we want has to start from us – just like my dad’s singular attempt to caution and correct the instructor and his Learner. It all boils down to individual character. I am not sure and I am no expert, but I think that for a Driving School instructor to misuse a one-way road, it is either the instructor is undisciplined or the Driving School is lacking in work ethics. Either way, it shows a rotten character in both entities.

Proper driving education is vital in our plan to reduce the number of deaths from bad driving. When we are able to get it right in the orientation and driving education, the reckless and unnecessary mistakes that lead to accidents will be reduced significantly, if not cease entirely.

The proper understanding of road signs is another axe to grind! The Zebra Crossing sign, for instance, is hardly respected by some drivers. In fact, many drivers do not know to slow down for people to cross, at the Zebra crossing. These drivers seem to assume that those crossing can see their vehicles and wait for the vehicles to pass; so, they just speed-on at the Zebra crossing!

Another common example is the traffic lights. When the light turns green and the vehicles on that side are going past, the other vehicles that are caught-up on the other side where the light turns yellow still think that they should keep going until the light turns red, before they stop! What they do not know is that when the light turns yellow, they should begin to slow down in preparation to stop for the red light that would soon come on. If they do not begin to slow down at the yellow light, how would they be able to stop in time when the red light comes on? Therefore, their ignorance and negligence at the traffic lights put their lives and the lives of others in danger. This is rampant at junctions where three roads or more meet.

This brings us to the speed freaks on the roads. These people lose control easily due to their high speed. They drive as though the road is a race course and are unable to stop in time, at the red lights and at junctions.

Another issue worth mentioning is the way some drivers overtake. These drivers overtake from the passenger’s side, which is not right. Overtaking should be done from the driver’s side of the vehicle where the driver can easily see the overtaking vehicle and either let it pass or accelerate away.

Parts of the road and their uses are next in this discussion. There is the service lane which is designed to be close to bus stops, walkways and sometimes buildings, especially of the commercial types. Vehicles carrying passengers and luggage usually ply this lane for easy and convenient disembarking and off-loading.

On the other hand, the main road (or highway) has lines on it, splitting the highway into lanes. For example, in a country of right-hand drive, there can be two lines splitting the road into three lanes in a three-tier carrier. The first lane on the right is the slow lane and the third lane on the extreme left is the fast lane, which can be used for overtaking. Now, these road rules are known only to very few drivers and that is why some badly tutored drivers would want to dangerously speed away even when on the slow lane, constituting a danger to other road users!

To mitigate against the above enumerated road user issues, the following steps can be useful:

(a) Fixing traffic lights a few meters before the Zebra Crossing and to build speed bumps just before the zebra crossing sign. These should slow the vehicles down.

 

(b)  As regards the traffic lights, they should be placed in two or three points at a few meters before the junctions, so that those who feel that the light just turned yellow and that they can still pass a junction, can no longer do so since there are now one or more other traffic lights before the junction, creating a fair distance to cover before getting to the junction. This is hoped to make them slow down, stop at the junction, and wait for the green light. For those who just speed past the yellow light, speed bumps can be placed before the junctions. Therefore, with the traffic lights and speed bumps strategically placed before the junctions, drivers are more or less forced to drive with some discipline at road junctions.

The teaching of the right way to overtake can be tricky. Before driving schools are allowed to teach people, the safety agency should make sure that the driving school and its instructors actually know the right way to overtake and teach it. These are the little things that matter that many people take for granted.

Additionally, conspicuous road signs can be placed at strategic places. For instance, in a right-hand-drive country there could be road signs that say “please overtake from the left” and a left-hand-drive country could have similar signs that say “please overtake from the right’’. Measures like these can go a long way.

When there is a left (or right) turn on the road, vehicles taking the turn should be on the lane closest to the turn; but this is different from what is presently obtainable on many of our roads today, where vehicles at the extreme opposite lane suddenly realize that they want to take the turn and because they are on a lane far from the turn, they suddenly cut into other cars to get to the turn fast, before they pass it! This is dangerous, and can cause a lot of confusion for everyone on the road. There should be orientation about this too. This orientation can be done through the electronic media like in television commercials, radio announcements; and the print media like the Newspapers. It can even be done through social media. In fact, social media is presently seen as the fastest way to pass information to the human populace of our time and has the largest reach too! Obviously.

When it comes to overspeeding, tackling this is very dicey, because one cannot do much to stop it, it really has to come from within the driver to slow down. We cannot have speed bumps throughout the roads, we cannot put traffic lights everywhere. It could be tempting to overspeed sometimes, especially on a good road. So, the driver has to have some self-control, some self-discipline and some needed calmness. Those are traits that cannot be forced on people. People have to imbibe them willingly, if they were not instilled in them from childhood. This brings us to the family.

The first society we are born into is the family. In the family, we learn life and survival. Within this society, we either inherit (in our genes) or acquire good traits and good behaviours. Thereafter, we grow and move into the larger society where these traits and behaviours are required to be put in good use. At this point we must exhibit what or who we innately are, as we interact with and engage other human beings in our daily endeavours; be it as driving instructors in a driving school, safety officers in a Road Safety Agency, or just as an everyday road user. We owe the society our self-control, self-discipline and the needed calmness, as vehicle drivers on the road, which can help to bring to the barest minimum, the frequent carnages on our roads!

A country’s economy and the money in the citizens’ pockets also play a role. When life essentials are beyond the common man’s reach, the common man tends to easily lose focus even if driving on the road because his mind is preoccupied with how to pay his bills, put food on his table, and the like. As the saying goes, a hungry man is an angry man. Unfortunately, the economy is not always in our control. We can only try by bringing our self-control, self-discipline and calmness to bear. We should just focus on the things we can control which hopefully, would help to stem the rate of accidents and destruction on our roads, especially in this period of global economic downturn and high cost of livelihood.

The Road Safety Agencies can also send messages to licensed drivers through the social media or on the electronic media as daily jingles, reminding them to always check their vehicles for any malfunctions, before things get out of hand; as in brake failures and tyre bursts, especially, while in motion on the road!

Having said so much about the drivers, the pedestrians have a part to play too. There is this slogan that when crossing the road, look left, look right and look left again before crossing; just to be sure that it is safe to cross.

My own candid advice is that pedestrians should not only look left, right and left again (three times), but should calm down and not be in a rush to dash across the road. They should wait until it is absolutely safe to cross. If they have to look four or five times, not just three times, just to be safe, it would not be foolish. Pedestrians’ bridges also, are invaluable especially where there are children in the vicinity, schools, markets and residential areas.

We also need to reiterate about the driving schools and driving instructors. The instructors are human beings and can be irritated and impatient when giving lessons. I remember reading a write-up in which the writer said something about a cartoon character named SpongeBob. SpongeBob’s driving instructor had become impatient and anxious when she was teaching SpongeBob, to the extent that she had to just give him a license so she could end the lessons and would not have to teach SpongeBob anymore! As funny as it sounds, that is sometimes the reality when it comes to the relationship between a driving instructor and a learner. Some instructors do not have the temperament, patience and resilience required to cope with the troubles associated with teaching a learner how to drive. There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to teaching; different students behave differently. Drivers that learnt under pressure, with harsh teachers are more than 50% probable to replicate the same attitude if they were to teach other people, and the cycle continues; and like a conveyor belt, it breeds more impatient and reckless drivers on the road.

I remember an accident I suffered some years ago which occurred as a result of the traffic light being too close to the junction and the impatience of the driver of the oncoming vehicle. As the green light passed my vehicle, the oncoming vehicle had the red light, but the driver did not stop! We had a collision at the junction. I thank God that the accident was not that severe. I still have the scar to show for it.

To help others and myself to be safer on the roads, I will obey the traffic lights. I will caution others when I can, and teach them to do the right thing, just like my father tried to do with the Driving School instructor that I earlier talked about. With my actions and good driving skills, I will show other drivers by example, how to drive and how to overtake safely. I will demonstrate resilience and patience if I were to teach driving. I will take note of the appropriate moment to use the horn effectively. Using my indicator lights at the right time to show where I want to turn is not to be ignored. I will be mindful of other road users, including the pedestrian. I will always ensure that my vehicle is in good condition before I set off.

I understand that little actions like these are very effective and can go a long way to preventing driving blunders and their resultant accidents.

Finally, I will teach the younger ones, other people around me and my future offspring, good character and good attitude toward life and survival, to uphold and spread to others.

I believe that with all these measures humanity will have better and safer drivers and road users.