Read a post from The Online Citizen titled "An Accident waiting to happen" in which Deputy Editor Andrew Loh writes about the madness of the crowd (as opposed to ‘the wisdom of the crowd’, geddit? Hahaha).
Apparently, the office crowd taking the Eunos MRT in the mornings run across the road, at the risk of their lives and amidst heavy traffic, in order to take a shorter route. The decision that these crowds face every morning is described as follows:
Andrew Loh then goes on to judge the madness of the crowd, once again, as follows:
Why anyone would tempt fate, as it were, in such a fashion every morning and evening, is beyond me. Where has common sense gone?
Now, I don’t profess to have seen the situation myself nor am I an expert on pedestrain crossing. My beef is with the statement above. "Where has the common sense gone?" I’m sure that for each one of the person who took that dangerous path, there was a calculated benefit and risk aggregated (albeit at a partially sub conscious and conscious level) before the would-be jaywalker jaywalked. Obviously, saving the effort and time in jaywalking brought more benefits than costs to the jaywalker (even if the costs involved death), if not they would not have walked the more dangerous path, would they?
For someone to come out and call these people irrational is to simplify things too much. After all, according to the article, "Yet, it seems that the authorities are not taking the situation seriously enough – even when it is apparent that they have known about it for at least more than a year." Now, this statement implies that these "crossings" have been going on for more than a year at very minimum. What Andrew Loh should have done is instead of calling these people foolish (despite the seemingly foolhardy nature of the actions taken by the masses) is whip out the stats for the number of accidents that have taken place at this very junction during this period when people started to take this "crossing". That might have given his article some substance.
Instead, the very headline implies that, despite this going on for an hour every weekday morning (I’m assuming this situation happens during the peak hour traffic on weekdays) for at least a year, there hasn’t even been one accident due to the nature of these actions yet. NOT one accident due to these crossings despite the sheer volume of traffic (both vehicular and human) as result of the crossings over the period of one year in which there are 52 weeks and hence roughly 52*5 workdays (ok, probably even less days since people might use a sheltered path when it rains).
Won’t you find that just a bit odd? If there hasn’t even been one accident, I’m more inclined to believe that accidents are out of the this ’system’ of road crossing. That somehow, crossing the road during that period, isn’t as dangerous as it seems to be ( it could be through the ability of new "crossers" to follow more experienced "crossers". It wouldn’t be illogical to think that "crossers" get more experienced each time they cross the road. Just think a tourist versus a local crossing the streets in Bangkok or Vietnam).
Ok, I’m about done. For the record, I personally don’t know Andrew Loh or anyone with TOC. I admire their spirit of standing up for their beliefs and having the gumption to voice their opinions. What irks me slightly is the spirit of ‘chivarorus handholding’ (is there such a term? haha) the article portrays ( at least the first portion before it descends into what would be a ’slightly better written’ complaint letter to the ST forum). If TOC or any other seemingly anti-establishment blogs out there wish to have their readers take them seriously (or perhaps attract serious readers?), they ought to put a little more thought into their writing.
(For those that don’t know, The Online Citizen is, in their own words "a blog site which endeavours to reflect the views and opinions of ordinary Singaporeans. It is a platform which welcomes contributions from the man in the street, the average citizen who is concerned about issues facing our country.")