Reader's Response draft for 'Floor lights'

According to “Floor lights help ‘smartphone zombies’ keep eye on the road”, (Tan, 2017), new LED strips that mimics the flow of the traffic lights are installed at 2 pedestrian crossings on a half-year trial to raise awareness of road safety.

As stated by Traffic Police (2017), the accident rates were at a 4 year high with pedestrian accidents making one-third of all fatal road accidents. Senior researcher, Menon (2017) mentioned that many pedestrians are hooked to their phones, so any method to better the safety of pedestrians are welcomed. Tan then states that the new feature will make crossing easier and safer with the assistance of the LED strips.

While I agree with the writer to a certain extent that the new safety system implemented would aid ‘smartphone zombies’ to cross the road safer and reduce road accidents, I feel that there is another group of pedestrians that require greater focus, which is the elderly.

Statistics have shown that accidents involving elderly are still increasing over the years. According to the figures provided by the Singapore Police Force (2017), both number of accident and number of fatalities involving elderly have increased by 19.6% and 21.7% respectively. In this case, LED lights will be only benefit the elderly only in traffic junction due to visual hindrance which prevents some of them from seeing the traffic signal from far. Even with the help of the senior citizen concession pass, which can be used to extend the duration of road crossing, accidents are still happening whereby the driver fails to notice and give way to the elderly pedestrian.

Next, the key problems of accidents involving elderly are jaywalking and irresponsible drivers. SPF also indicated that the number of accidents involving elderly who jaywalked increased by 42.1% in recent years. In addition to that, elderly pedestrian fatalities are usually caused by drivers who are not aware of their surrounding and failed to give way to these pedestrians. Despite certain effort made by the government to educate the elderly on road safety such as introducing the Road Master Test Kit, which is used to test elderly’s physical abilities that impact on their safety on the roads, and Silver Zones, which warns motorists to slow down and implements road initiatives to aid elderly in crossing road, it has not fully addressed the problem as the numbers are not going down. This means that they are still prone to accident from irresponsible driver who fails to keep a look out. I feel that government should step up their effort in imposing heavy punishments for motorists who fail to follow the regulations in the Silver Zones and also to further publicize Test Kit and make it easily available for senior citizen.

In conclusion, although Singapore government came out with certain safety measures to ensure road safety of the people, it is evident that the accidents involving elderly are not showing signs of improvements. Therefore, they should be more focused on the safety of the elderly by enforcing stringent road regulations and improving existing programmes.

Reference:

Tan, Christopher. “Floor lights help 'smartphone zombies' keep eye on the road.” The Straits Times, 9 May 2017, www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/floor-lights-help-smartphone-zombies-keep-eye-on-the-road. Accessed 15 Sept. 2017.

''Annual Road Traffic Situation 2016" Singapore Police Force, 15 February 2017, https://www.police.gov.sg/~/media/spf/files/statistics/20170215_stats_road_traffic_situation_2016.pdf Accessed 27 Sept. 2017.

Land Transport Authority, n.d,

https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/ltaweb/en/roads-and-motoring/projects/road-and-commuter-facilities/silver-zones.html

Accessed 27 Sept. 2017.