Gary Corbit
2 September 2008
opinion
I drive to my office through residential areas and rarely is there a day when I do not wonder at whether anyone actually teaches road safety to pedestrians.
People walk on the wrong side of the road, i.e. with their back to on-coming traffic, people cross in front of cars waiting to turn at junctions and my personal nightmare scenario, children as young as five years take the view that running as fast as you can across a busy road without looking at what may be coming, is the way to beat your class mate to school.
This of course transcends to driving standards when drivers stop without warning on busy highways, believe that indicating is a sign of weakness, drive without lights to save their batteries and horrifically crowd their young children on the front seat of their cars with no seat belts so that they can see where they are going! I pray that it is never through the windscreen. I regularly ask myself whether there is a road safety education scheme and if so do the administrators believe it is working?
They say that nostalgia is not what it used to be but I remember in London when us school children were indoctrinated as to crossing dangerous roads with the words, "Look right, look left, look right again and if all clear, quick march"
This was followed by a concept called the Green Cross code featuring a large man clad in a green and white superman outfit, who would rescue errant children from road accidents if they had forgotten the rules of road crossing. Road safety education was taken very seriously indeed.
If you are a pedestrian involved in an accident with a vehicle whose insurance is the minimum third party sticker type, the compensation that you may possibly receive from a driver who is proven to be at fault is limited to just 1m maximum by statute.
Yes, the driver's insurance may cover for higher limits and yes you may take your case to a civil court but we are certainly not in a North America environment where liability is unlimited and people actually fake pedestrian accidents to defraud insurance companies.
In insurance we hear many depressing stories and astonishingly, I have heard from their very lips of machoistic young men who regularly stroll nonchalantly across busy roads during peak traffic periods deliberately looking for expatriates drivers to hit them so that they can claim millions of shillings in compensation.
They are badly mistaken and are literally gambling with their lives, all for a very small jackpot! I truly hope someone somewhere is planning a revival in Road Safety education at school levels and please, do it soon.
Mr Corbit is the managing director of ICEA Limited
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