It was road-safety week in Israel last week and while there was a frequent stream of road-safety commercials emanating from electronic media, there didn't seem to be any traffic police on hand in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to help enforce the message. According to what radio listeners were being told, more people have been killed in traffic accidents since the establishment of the state than the total number of people killed by terrorists and in the wars in which Israel participated. If that's accurate, it's a devastating piece of information. The question is what we are doing about it. I was in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on two consecutive days last week. If there were traffic policemen on hand to nip road safety violations in the bud, they must have been wearing civilian attire; no uniformed policeman was visible when I was nearly run down by a sleek minibus as I was crossing Allenby Street in Tel Aviv on a green light. Not only was there a traffic light – there was also a crosswalk, but the driver of the minibus chose to ignore both. He didn't even bother to get out and apologize, although he did stop the vehicle some five meters beyond the crosswalk – but apparently not to check on the pedestrian whom he had almost propelled into the next world. The road safety commercials on the radio implied that most traffic accidents are caused by drivers who are too busy fiddling with their smartphones to pay attention to what's happening on the road. This may indeed be true in part, but not entirely. Pedestrians who choose to ignore traffic regulations are also to blame. It probably happens all over the country, but one tends to be more conscious of what takes place near one's own home. Bus stops are located in the center of the road for vehicles traveling in opposite directions along Keren Hayesod, King George and Straus streets, which are extensions of each other. The bus stops are accessible via crosswalks and traffic lights on the corners of Keren Hayesod and Ahad Ha'am streets. Most pedestrians there ignore the red light – including elderly people who can barely shuffle across the road and mothers wheeling baby carriages. On Shabbatot, fathers shepherd groups of children across the road on a red light. Admittedly, there is less traffic on Shabbat, but four-wheeled and two-wheeled vehicles speeding suddenly around the corner past Terra Sancta could easily hit someone if drivers fail to swerve or slow down. How can children be taught to observe road safety when parents themselves break the rules? How can one make parents observe the rules? If there are not enough police and social workers around, recruit senior high-school students on a roster basis, so that they miss two hours of school each week at most and issue them with clearly marked vests that says they are entitled to make citizens' arrests, especially in cases where parents put children at risk. Several years ago, high-school students were recruited for a “clean up Jerusalem” campaign, and if someone dropped any kind of trash in the street, one of the recruits would politely come up to that person and say: “Excuse me, you dropped a cigarette butt,” or “You dropped an envelope” or whatever it was that they dropped instead of waiting till they passed a garbage receptacle, of which there are plenty in Jerusalem. It worked for the duration of the campaign. Unfortunately, too many people still have no respect for public areas, but the situation is gradually improving. Imagine if someone with authority would come up to a mother wheeling a baby carriage across the street on a red light, and would simply remove the carriage with the baby in it and give the mother a summons to family court where she would be charged as unfit, and the baby would be permanently removed from her care. Drastic? Of course it is, and unlikely to ever be instituted. Yet until a year ago, social workers could determine that children in low-income families were being abused because they were undernourished, or were sometimes slapped by their parents, or whose parents went out to work at odd jobs to bring some extra income into the home. Until Welfare and Social Services Minister Haim Katz made social workers understand that the best place for a child is with the biological parents – not in temporary foster care, or in a youth village or a kibbutz – hundreds of children were removed from their homes each year. Obviously, the best place for a baby is in its mother's arms, but if she's going to risk that baby's life by not only crossing the road on a red light, but also talking on her cellphone while she does so, perhaps she doesn't deserve the joy of motherhood. As for the doddering seniors who cross on a red light, one can't help thinking that they're playing a different version of Russian roulette. When I was growing up in Melbourne, Australia, a popular road safety slogan was, “The life you save may be your own.” It's something that people in Israel should think about.
