In the last week, I read two contradictory
news items from Delhi and Ahmedabad. The Delhi Traffic Police took out a drive
for unruly motorists to respect pedestrians by giving them enough space on
zebra crossing. Motorists who stopped before zebra crossings were given
chocolates and key chains and the ones who did not were fined. The reason for
this drive was the data of road fatalities – almost 46% of the people who died
in road crashes in Delhi were pedestrians. Pedestrians do not have proper
footpaths to walk on or safe crossings to go across the roads. It is
commendable that the Delhi traffic police took the road fatalities data seriously
and ran a campaign of supporting pedestrian rights.
The other news items came from our own
Ahmedabad (DNA, 29/06/15) where pedestrians were termed as ‘rash pedestrians’ by
the Traffic Police and blamed for their own death or injuries in road crashes. The
pedestrians were asked to use zebra crossings and footpaths to be safe. Great!
It would have been utmost helpful, if the Traffic Police took some efforts of
showing the said zebra crossings and footpaths by walking for about 200 meters
on any city road! Where are the footpaths and zebra crossings in Ahmedabad?
Footpaths are mostly covered by parked vehicles, roadside businesses and other
things. There is no space left on the zebra crossings for the pedestrians to
cross. The zebra crossings start and end in blank walls, planters and
hoardings. With such sorry state of pedestrian infrastructure in the city, they
are still blamed as ‘causes’ of accidents.
How can the pedestrians alone be the
‘causes’ of these accidents? When there is a collision can you only blame one
side? I can only picture these ‘rash’ pedestrians as being zombies who are
crashing themselves into the fast-moving vehicles and committing suicide.
Calling pedestrians as the sole reason for accidents amounts to blaming the
victims. Pedestrians are victims and not perpetrators of traffic crimes because
they are at higher risks and are more vulnerable during road crashes. Victim
blaming has its own logical fallacies and besides, it is convenient to blame
someone – it distracts the attention from the real problems. If you blame the
victims like the pedestrians then no one will ask questions about systemic
problems like why there is no safe infrastructure for pedestrians in the city?
OR why the Traffic Police is only concerned about protecting the vehicular
traffic and why do they ignore the pedestrian or the non-motorised traffic?
Traffic Police in Ahmedabad and in other
cities are doing commendable job of managing the unmanageable – the
never-ending traffic. They have scarce resources, inadequate staff, limited
equipments and a thankless job. But an important part of their job is to reduce
road fatalities and injuries. Blaming the victims does not help their job at
all. Rather they should proactively work with different road users to make them
safe on our hostile roads.
About one-third of the total intra-city
journeys in our cities are by walking. We all have to walk sometime or the
other. Unsafe pedestrian environment affects everyone in the family. When
pedestrians are using the roads, they are scavenging for safe spaces to walk
on. They operate with a different logic compared to the motorised traffic.
Beyond the usual contest over road space, it is essential that both the
pedestrians and the motorists understand each other’s way of dealing with the
road space and have mutual respect. Cities, which are built on mutual respect
and shared spaces, are the most beautiful cities in the world.
(6th July, 2015: DNA Ahmedabad edition, Cities Supplement, Page 5)
