Yoram Kaniuk
Fight deaths on our roads
Yoram Kaniuk urges officials to treat killers on our roads as we treat West Bank protestors
Inglorious deaths in the State of Israel are those that kill pedestrians and motorists on the roads of our cities and villages.
A few days ago, a friend of mine crossed the street at the crosswalk. First, she waited, and then stepped onto the road. A car stopped, which is rare around here, so she walked on, yet the driver of another vehicle appeared from the left and wounded her; she is currently in grave condition, unconscious at the hospital.
Road Accident
Ynet reporters
Likud member's teenage son seriously injured in West Bank accident
I often walk through Tel Aviv’s streets, and even though I served as a soldier in a tough war, crossing my city’s crosswalks is the most dangerous thing I’ve done in my life. Indeed, I am old, and motorists like to disparage me when I start to cross the street. They veer around me, see me with my cane, and yell at me, telling me I inconvenience them.
The other day, for example, I was crossing as I usually do, and a driver stopped for me because I was already half way down the crosswalk; however, a motorbike then rushed in around the abovementioned decent driver, and had I not been able to retreat, which isn’t easy in my current state, I would be wounded today and the motorcyclist would be writing this op-ed in my place.
This motorcyclist would have been sentenced to a two-month conditional sentence by Israeli judges, and would have performed his community service at the Tel Aviv Hilton, with a beachfront view; his crying mother would nonetheless argue that her son was punished “disproportionately.”
Candidates for suicide
For years now, our mayor had been asking for a permit to establish a municipal police force, as without it the murder on our roads will merely intensify. The recent “highway terror attack” that claimed the life of a judge would not have happened had we seen more police officers on our roads.While walking around Tel Aviv in the past two years, I have not seen even one police officer lying in wait for these scumbag drivers. Yet our government, assuming we have one, does not permit municipal police forces.
Given the extent of killing on our roads, our Defense Ministry would do well to link road safety at crosswalks to its role of maintaining Israel’s security: Use the same techniques utilized by the police officers at West Bank protests against the killers on our roads, especially in Tel Aviv, where every bastard is a king and every pedestrian is a candidate for suicide.
