She says ...

Press, 12 April 1979, Page 21

She says ...

It seems we are now in the opening stages of a nine-month traffic “blitz.” It sounds good, but I cannot help wondering if it is not a “look at me, I'm doing something” exercise by the authorities. So far, I can’t say I've heard them mention any aspect of enforcement that they shouldn’t be doing every day in the normal course of their duties anyway. Perhaps they should ban the term, “blitz.” I know that many traffic officers dislike it intensely — almost as much as it seems beloved by politicians. The officers’ dislike has been intensified, not unnaturally, by the “Gestapo” image alleged to hang about some of the publicity which went with the Christmas 1978 “blitz.” According to my dictionary, a “blitz” is an intensive attack, or ”... a violent campaign intended to bring about speedy victory,” if you take “blitzkrieg.” I can’t see either being applied sensibly to something planned to last nine months. Anyway, this period of gestation is supposed to bring about a drop in the road-death rate: an obviously desirable target which is surely one of the main aims of the traffic force anyway.

But I suspect that the Ayatollah, with his influence on fuel supplies, will have more effect than the Men from the Ministry. Less traffic always seems to mean fewer accidents.

Perhaps the most reasonable attitude is to accept that the “blitz” is mainly one of publicity — of bringing to the public’s attention that traffic officers have been told to watch more closely for drunken or drugged drivers, and so on. To remind people of the new legislation on driving and drinking. A good thing, this. I trust it will be extended to continued and increased publicity and enforcement for the altered road rules brought in (then later altered somewhat) two or three years ago. Give-way-when-tuming-left still, obviously, catches out a lot of drivers. The laws on signalling and following distances are just a joke. They’re hardly ever observed — and there’s no sign of any enforcement of them, either. The men who churn out the avalanche of laws with such enthusiasm need to be told that the mere process achieves nothing. Except, perhaps, more confusion among us lesser mortals. — Barbara Petre