Incredible but true. The Direcţia Generală de Poliţie a Municipiului Bucureşti (DGPMB) this week released figures which are shocking: 115 pedestrians killed so far this year on Bucharest’s streets. A further 900 have been seriously injured.
So who’s to blame?
Forget what you may read elsewhere (and if you read Romanian take a look at he comments underneath this article): to blame for these accidents are the idiots who break the speed limit, who do not stop at pedestrian crossings, who jump traffic lights, who drive the wrong way along one-way streets and who care about nothing except getting from A to B as quickly as possible.
Yet until the police begin enforcing the law, nothing will change. Why should drivers stop at pedestrian crossings if nobody does anything to make sure that they do?
No, expect the numbers of deaths to rise. Alas it is pedestrians who are getting killed, not the drivers. Were it the other way around you could expect swift action, for in Romania the car is king and pedestrians are beyond all contempt.
To the Romanian driver, a dead pedestrian is one less obstacle on the city’s roads.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, I agree, sometimes it’s drivers who don’t obey the rules. But somebody has to start obeying the rules! If pedestrians would cross the street only on specially marked places, drivers would have to obey their rules as well. I don’t understand why pedestrians can’t wait 30 seconds for a green light or why they can’t walk 20m to the nearest crossing! But in terms of enforcing the law, when a driver hits a pedestrian on a pedestrian crossing he goes to jail; pedestrians should also go to jail if they get hit by a car on the middle of the road, to be fair! So drivers usually stop at red lights and pedestrian crossings (even if they do it at the last moment because they drive Mercedes and they find it hard to take their foot of the pedal) because if they hit a pedestrian – not only they kill him – but they also go to jail. While some pedestrians are so stupid they don’t even realize they can die when crossing on the middle of the street.
It’s a matter of perception, jail is perceived much closer than heaven (or hell).
Sorry but you are wrong, very wrong.
If pedestrians do not cross the street where they should, that’s because there is no point in doing so: nobody stops anyway!
Try this (please, do): Find a pedestrian crossing on a busy road. Stand on the pavement and wait for the cars to stop so you can use the crossing. I tell you now: THEY WILL NOT. Not one.
This is not true! Did you say you live in Bucharest?! It’s exactly the other way around!
Pedestrians don’t care wether they cross the street on the specially marked crosses or they just cross on the middle of the road! Also they don’t even care if they cross on red light! A few weeks ago one guy that I saw (older guy, maybe 65-70 y.o.) tried to cross on the middle of the street. Of course, he couldn’t walk very fast and a car came and braked and almost hit that guy (he was on the middle of the street!). But that guy, instead of running faster or simply thanking God that he was still alive, he took a stone and hit the car with it!!! Poor driver couldn’t say anything, he just left the place, but if I were the driver I would have broken that guy’s legs!
Yesterday, same fucking thing: a pedestrian cross close to Universitate, a stupid fat lady who didn’t give a shit about red lights and a BMW who braked just in time to avoid splashing her on the road. The BMW driver was swearing and the stupid fat lady was rushing away with one of her shoes missing (she lost it because she got scared and made a few steps away from the car while leaving her shoe behind).
So it’s not like you say, and the number of casualties will go up but only because of stupid pedestrians running on the middle of the streets to catch a tram or a bus or who knows what other stupid reason!
And this is also your fault – foreign companies and foreign managers – because if someone gets to work 2 minutes later than his schedule, managers start shouting at him and threaten to fire him!