Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Shock Therapy: Dealing With The Madness On The Roads

How unbelievably fast the days roll in and out these years!
I cannot bring myself to believe that we are already in December. The year is coming to an end and with that a new year is about to begin. Time indeed waits for no man!
The much-celebrated festive season, Christmas and New Year, is around the corner. However with the on-going global recession, not many people will be able to splash out on gifts for family and friends. Some folks are very happy that this Christmas will be a real one and not a commercial one.
Whatever way you look at it, it appears that Wall Street has become the Grinch who stole Christmas!
Talking about the festive season, it is also the time when many people take time off for holidays as well as visit family and friends all over the place.
Unfortunately with the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads, there is always a spike in road accidents, resulting in deaths and economic losses running into billions of rands every year during the festive season.
With the horrible road death statistics of South Africa as it stands, I was not the least surprised to hear a program on a talk show radio station focusing on whether or not shock therapy should be employed to curb the behaviour of drivers caught breaking the rules of the road.
By shock therapy, callers were advocating for pictures of the most horrendous accidents in all the gory details to be shown to offending drivers on top of the conventional severe fines.
I say, shock therapy is fine by me , provided it will lead to a lasting change in the behaviour of those who don't give a hoot for their own lives and that of other road users!

4 comments:

The Author said...

Posekyere,

Your 'view' of Christmas is so refreshingly practical! Great!

Shock therapy may work in the first world. Living in Africa is shock therapy. You do not shock drivers, here, into good behaviour with gory pictures.

posekyere said...

Hehehe!

I guess you are right, Nana Yaw.
If the "therapy" meted out to those offending drivers at the 37 Hospital Morgue did not do the trick, then definitely shock therapy is not the answer here.

But then, what do we do about the atrocious behaviour on the roads?

Adaeze said...

I love your perspectives on things!And lol, what Nana is saying is probably true. I'm shocked and annoyed at how careless some people are though. Last time I was driving on the road in Nigeria, we were literally 1 second away from a massive crash into a huge trailer that decided to drive on the opposite lane. But, isn't it quite easy for people to get driving licences? I've gotten the impression you can actually just buy one. At least in Nigeria that is.

posekyere said...

Good to read your comments again, Adaeze!
I think, perhaps, the problem of Africa is premised on our total disregard for the rules of the games.
Our attitude is like: we are only interested in getting from A to B. To hell with all the rules and the requirements.
My question is how do we make sure that obeying the rules become just as important as the actual achievement of our goals and aspirations?