Helping the Elders Cross the Streets, Using a Series of Methods

As the society is, aging fast, we need to, do this, to ensure the safety of the elderly populations, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…

The black-and-white strips of the crossing of the intersections, it doesn’t, guarantee the safety of life, when the vehicles don’t respect the pedestrians, the intersections became, a trap, and when we’re, careless, we easily, get murdered by vehicle, run over.

There’s the mess of traffic here in Taiwan, especially when the pedestrians crossed the streets using the crosswalks, and many pedestrians were hit by the drivers, it’s, very awful to see.  Reviewing the past, the former legislator, Chiao’s mother-in-law was run over and killed by a construction truck; the former ambassador, Lu was hit by a cab while cross the streets.  The newspapers from Singapore once reported, that there’s, the need for the education of teaching the cars to respect the pedestrians, looking back through the years, this, hadn’t improved, not one bit.

The Police Department estimated, that there’s, a higher rate of mortality of the pedestrians over sixty-five being run over and killed, early in the mornings, and early in the evenings, are the times these accidents tend to happen more often, in order to prevent these sorts of accidents, the Department of Transportation is now, taking measures, for instance, setting the cross intersections closer to the sidewalks, setting up an island in the middle of the roads, and if the cars are within three meters of each other, the drivers are getting fined, but, all of these measures, seemed to be, ineffective.

like this???

“The roads are, dangerous”, as the saying goes, especially as the elderly population became, less agile, with a slower reaction time, declined vision, demented, wearing the darker color clothing, this increases the risks of them getting hit by cars.

There are not enough law-abiding citizens living here, the drivers’ not letting the pedestrians have the right of way is the primary reason, and, the pedestrian also is the cause too, we need to, shoulder up the equal responsibilities, because if one doesn’t abide by the laws, the roads will always be, too dangerous to cross.

As the elderly members of the community go outside, they should put on reflective bracelets, dress in brighter colors, so the drivers can see them more easily; the drivers should not force themselves across the cross sections, while the pedestrians should, move swiftly across.  And the local governments should, lengthen the time of the pedestrian signals too, and offer more education to how to drive safely, how to cross the roads more safely to the drivers, as well as the pedestrians too, only when we used all these measures together, will we be able to, reduce the number of cases of run-ins with the traffic for the aging generations.

And so, this just showed, how it’s NOT just the drivers’ responsibilities, to keep the roads safe for crossing, the pedestrians need to watch themselves too, it’s just, that as we get older, our reaction time slows down, and even IF we want to, walk faster, across a busy intersection, our bodies, may not move accordingly to what our minds tell them to, and so, the drivers of the motor vehicles need to, watch out more, but, keeping the roads safe for crossing, IS the responsibilities of both the drivers of motor vehicles, as well as the pedestrians.