Who will tame Kigali's errant motorists?

So an extraordinary thing happened to me in Remera recently. I stood at a pedestrian crossing, and a car stopped to allow me cross. If you are a resident of Kigali, especially if you are a pedestrian, you will know why this was such an unusual event. It would be the easiest thing in the world to find innumerable reasons to praise Kigali. It is a regional exemplar on how things should be, but, where would the fun in that be. I am with the nations head of state on this. You get nowhere by measuring yourself against the lowest common denominator, so I am withholding just and deserved praise, at least for now. I am not a resident of Kigali (hence forth spelt Kigari, I contend Kigali came about because the colonising powers found the more correct spelling too much of a tongue twister), but, I have now been in the city long enough to whinge and grumble as is the wont of residents of every other city on our planet. Furthermore, I can claim to have gone through many of the necessary rites of passage before one can claim the right to start complaining about those nagging daily irritants. I have taken a ‘terrifying’ ride on a motor cycle taxi, participated in Umuganda, I dug up rocky earth to level a road if you must know, and have blisters to prove it. My top gripe then, pedestrian crossing etiquette, closely followed by why on earth am I the only one complaining about it. The clue is in the name dear motorists, in fact everyone who is propelled along by anything other than feet, that means bicyclists too. When pedestrians stand on the pavement, by a pedestrian crossing, you as a motorist are supposed to stop, if you can do so safely. You are then supposed to wait until the pedestrians are safely on the other side of the road. We may as well state the blindly obvious since it apparently doesnt seem so to motorists: At a pedestrian crossing, pedestrians have right of way. On that rarest of occasions when a motorist did stop for me, I had been waiting for the best part of five minutes, being ignored by driver after driver, after motorcyclist. I watched a number of braver, more streetwise souls step onto the crossing, dodging cars, motors cycles, which incredibly showed no sign of stopping even as the intrepid pedestrians crossed. I had not the slightest intention of trusting life and limb to motorists who regard the highway code as a suggestion they are free to ignore, rather than rules of the road to be obeyed. This is a well ordered city, where such chaos ought to have no place. And I do hate to pile on yet more work on the long suffering police force, but, in the unlikely event that they are reading this, I have a suggestion they might find interesting: levying fines. In Britain where I live, one often hears it confidently asserted that Britain has the best police force in the world. In truth, they do have some justification for that. Rwanda too may just have good reason to make a similar assertion. The country can certainly claim to have arguably the best police force on the African continent. And unlike Britain, which has had the best part of a couple of centuries to build up such a police service, and can afford to spend billions of pounds sterling annually on its upkeep, Rwanda has had only a decade or so to create a service that is undoubtedly the envy of the region, and on a very limited budget. Nor am I drawing a discreet veil over the Transparent International report which was released a few months ago, which pointed to corruption within the police. It is a measure of the services excellence that they have accepted the report, taken it as constructive criticism, and have been weeding out the few souls who for whatever reason succumbed to easy temptation. We know from the polices own announcement that over two hundred officers were dismissed between this and last year. Maintaining such high standards has to be an ongoing process, and it is costly. Thankfully (and this is the bit the police might find interesting) as far as the costs go, Rwandas motorists clearly understand this, which is why, each and every single day, they beg for the police to fine them for driving about as though there were no such thing as a highway code in Rwanda. The more the police oblige, the safer everyone will be, including the motorists themselves. The infractions are enough to keep the boys and girls in blue busy. It seems to have become the custom, for instance, to jump traffic lights on red almost exactly three seconds before they switch to green. Fines for that alone should be enough to cover the bill for the new smart police uniforms. And since virtually every motorist in Kigari seems to take little notice of the law against mobile phones while in control of a vehicle, fines for this ought to be an important revenue for the police budget. A suitably hefty fine for any motorist, or any vehicle, motorised or not, which crosses a pedestrian crossing while there are pedestrians on it, might buy a couple of police vehicles annually. And this is before we come to the motorcycle taxis. Granted these are the citys lifeline, they provide self employment for many people, are properly regulated, and many other institutions could learn a thing or two from them about customer service. Most of them, however, certainly need to re-acquaint themselves with traffic regulations. On my first introduction to the motor taxi, we had four near misses in a space of thirty five minutes, all due to the apparent conviction that rather than look, signal then execute a manoeuvre, you simply move to occupy the space you want, then, and only then, may be have a quick look. That space is almost always occupied by another vehicle, and two into one doesnt go. You may or may not bother to signal. That apparently is optional. Surprisingly, I actually repeated the experience. I expected another white knuckle ride, but, luckily motorcycle taxi number 3398, materialised. Seek him out if you are of a nervous disposition. Not only did 3398 look before he executed a manoeuvre, he actually stopped at a pedestrian crossing. He, however, is the exception that proves the rule, most if not all the others also seem keen to give some of their earnings to the police through fines. I could not expect to find 3398 every time I needed to get somewhere, so buses have been a regular means of transportation. Based on that experience bus companies too must be congratulated on their desire to help finance the excellent police force. Every vehicle comes with a stipulated number of seated and standing passengers. Bus operators have interpreted this to mean as many as you can squeeze in. A contributing factor to this is that they will not depart from their starting point, until they are full. Passengers could be sitting for the best part of forty five minutes, waiting for the bus to fill up. When it finally does move, full, it continues to pick up passengers as it goes along. Now there will always be times when public transport is a squeeze, but, this seems designed to pack people in like sardines in a can. Since bus companies on their own are unlikely to show consideration for their customers, I am sure a fine every time they overfill the bus might remind them that without those passengers, they have no business. They might start by conveying the passengers they do have to where they need to go, rather than wait until the bus is full before moving. There are many others keen to contribute to the police development fund. The private motorcyclists (I have seen a few) carrying a passenger, who in turn carries iron rods at least three metres in length. By no stretch of the imagination can this be deemed safe, not even a red warning flag. Or transporting building materials on bicycles. Wood several metres long precariously balanced, unsteadily making their way on a bicycle. Of course not everyone can afford to hire the appropriate vehicle, but, the consequences of trying to do things on a shoestring can lead to loss of life, and that is always very dear. African roads are notorious for the number of lives lost on them. Dangerous driving is too often compounded by poor vehicle maintenance. No comparative statistics exist as yet, but, it is almost certain that Rwandas introduction of measures like Controle Technique (CT), which awards certificates of road worthiness to any motor vehicle over two years old, enforced by a police force that actually serves rather than preys on the public, have saved a significant number of lives. The rules are clear. Yet one does not have to be a car mechanic to notice that some of the vehicles on the road have somehow slipped through the CT net. A motorcycle with wonky wheels, spewing filthy fumes so that following drivers can barely see where they are going cannot possibly have passed its CT test, which presumably also tests the level of exhaust emissions. There is another fine there. And there are certainly fines due, as hefty as you like, for overtaking on blind corners, which happens with alarming regularity. One shudders to imagine what could happen. While we are on the subject of CTs, it should be a point of pride that this country is at least showing concern for air quality. This is a problem that will only grow as the economy expands. Part of the solution is more walking (Please carry a bottle of water), fewer private cars on the roads, more public transport, and definitely more bicycle lanes. And lets all together spare a thought for law enforcement officers (or as American slang would have them LEOS) who have to make sense of peoples idiosyncratic logic. The law in this land requires motorcyclists and their passengers to wear safety helmets. This is because the head is a vital piece of equipment for the human machine, and it is delicate. It does not do well against hard objects like tarmac, especially when it is thrown against them at speed. Knowing this, how and why do people think that while they must wear helmets, it is all right for their little kids to sit with them on motorcycles bare headed? And pedestrians must learn that the highway code also applies to them. Motor vehicles are not your friends. When you collide with them, you do not smile, apologise and walk away. More likely than not, an ambulance has to be called, or worse a hearse, with some poor soul having to scrape what is left of you off the road. Knowing this, why or why, even where pavements have been provided, no doubt at extra expense to the nations exchequer, do people insist on perambulating on the road, cheek by jowl with traffic. There are plenty of reasons for grumpiness away from the roads too. I am reliably informed that there is a great deal of gnashing of teeth against building regulations. The bad news about this is that judging by what people are constructing, and how, more and tougher regulations are needed. But, thats a grumble for another time. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Who will tame Kigali's errant motorists?