by Wispen Lee

Created on: September 07, 2009   Last Updated: September 08, 2009

Imagine an 8 year old child, skipping cheerily on her way home from school, seeing a gap in the traffic and then dashing across the road. A car takes a sharp turn, doesn't notice the young girl, then the accident happens. This is the stuff of parent's nightmares.

The safety of school pedestrians is rightly of a high priority in Singapore. Given both the dense population in Singapore as well as the recklessness of school children, it is a prudent step indeed to ensure that extra precautions are taken to ensure that school pedestrians are protected from vehicular accidents.

Singapore has introduced various precautions to ensure school pedestrian crossing safety. While zebra crossings are currently one of the most prevalent means of imposing a form of school pedestrian crossing, due to their low cost in implementing and relative flexibility in terms of dealing with traffic, they are not the most effective in ensuring school pedestrian crossing safety, and with sufficient funds, other steps should be taken instead.

Zebra crossings are a cheaper version of having traffic lights for crossings, because they do not require traffic lights to be installed, but merely require instead a demarcation on the road to alert motorist of the right of way for pedestrians to cross. In a society where vehicles are few and traffic is slow, zebra crossings with the aid of a traffic warden near school crossings should be sufficient to ensure the safety of most school pedestrians. However, in Singapore, where the pace of life is said to be one of the fastest in the world, and where individuals are constantly rushing from location to location, the mere right of way for crossing is insufficient in ensuring the safety of school pedestrians.

Admittedly, Singapore does have additional precautions taken to increase the effectiveness of zebra crossings, such as by having road signs that alert motorists as to the fact that they are entering a school zone, and road bumps close to school crossing areas. However, in light of the fact that the outcome of an accident is a loss of life, such precautions are insufficient.

Where the stakes are as high as the life of a child, the appropriate precautions to take should be the highest possible. Instead of extensive use of zebra crossings, more traffic lights should be used. Traffic lights, while not infallible in light of a reckless driver, would at least ensure that traffic would be stopped before the school pedestrians can cross. Furthermore, traffic wardens, more prevalent in western societies, can be further used to ensure that traffic is stopped before allowing school pedestrians to cross. This works two fold, firstly by stopping the traffic, and secondly, by stopping children from dashing across the road. Lastly, speed limits can be imposed in school areas, to further increase the awareness of motorists when it comes to high risk areas such as school areas.

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