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Time we stopped spilling blood on streets

By Yao Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-06 07:47

The Hangzhou government has got red-and-yellow hearts painted on the city's major zebra crossings to drive more driving sense into drivers. The wider and more eye-catching crossings are part of a campaign to raise traffic law awareness among both drivers and pedestrians.

But the "save-life" campaign launched after Hu Bin ran over a pedestrian on May 7 couldn't save the life of a 17-year-old girl. Ma Fangfang, a migrant worker, was walking over the "save-life" zebra crossings on Mogan Road on Tuesday night when Wei Zhigang drove his Porsche into her.

This is another case of a rich, young brat running over an innocent pedestrian. And it comes when Hu Bin's case is still in the headlines.

Many people still think three years is too short a sentence for Hu and too light a deterrent for others. They say a drink-driving case in Nanjing, in which five people including a pregnant woman were killed, is a painful reminder of how ineffective the law is to prevent blood from being spilled on the road.

As if netizens' allegation of Hu being replaced by someone else in court was not enough, Tuesday night saw Wei and his woman companion both claiming to be behind the wheel when the car hit Ma.

Then came the damaging proof that Wei had more than the permitted level of alcohol in his blood. So it's another case of drink driving and causing the death of an innocent. And if the rising trend of rashness and arrogance among the rich on the road are anything to go by, this certainly won't be the last.

Red-and-yellow hearts on zebra crossings to remind drivers that every person with a beating heart has equal right to live are not the solution to the problem, simply because the message is lost on the killers behind the wheels who think money can solve any problem.

The contempt they seem to have for law and the little importance they accord to other people's lives is pathetic. For quite some time, we have been debating why some of the young and rich have become so morally degraded. But the answers seem to be too complicated to help us find a remedy.

So for now our urgent task should be to plug the loopholes in our statutes, especially those covering drink driving. Drink driving is considered a violation of traffic law, and drunk drivers can be detained for no more than 15 days if they have not caused an accident. This is too light a penalty for an act that could lead to somebody's death.

To really prevent a person from sitting behind the wheel after drinking, we have to treat drink driving as a crime even if no "accident", injury or death, takes place, and ban repeated offenders from driving for life.

China is now the world's largest car market. But unfortunately, the rate of accidents will rise as more and more new cars hit the road. Laws and rules have to be changed to deal with this challenge, too.

The best thing, no doubt, would be to build a civilized car culture where drivers would follow traffic rule and blood wouldn't be spilt on the road. But since that will take years, we should let the law do the talking for now because that is a more fundamental solution than the hearts painted on zebra crossings.

(China Daily 08/06/2009 page8)