ZEBRA CROSSINGS

If any of you works in one of the buildings along Jalan Raja Chulan near Pavillion and you have to park your car next to Novotel (because most of the buildings do not have sufficient parking bays for tenants) then you are surely familiar with the difficulty when trying to cross the roads in that area especially in the morning. It is like committing suicide! I am now contemplating to tell my HR manager that the staffs ought to be given “hardship allowance” for having to brave the traffic to get to work everyday. I almost got hit by a car this morning and I am fuming mad! I need to let this anger out of my system before I start work.

In all honesty, if the City Hall and traffic police do not do anything, a major accident involving pedestrian is just waiting to happen. You see, there are two zebra crossings between Wisma Cosway, Novotel and the road behind Novotel. The thing is, only the zebra crossing behind Novotel is equipped with a set of traffic lights. The one between Wisma Cosway and Novotel only has the blinking orange light to remind drivers to slow down as they are approaching the zebra crossing. But we all know how Malaysian drivers are. We can be proud of the fact that we have some of the worst and most notorious drivers in the world! And please, I don’t need some empirical studies to support this contention. The daily behaviours that I see on the road are enough to lead me to that conclusion.

Anyway, if Malaysian drivers can ignore the red light and speed off, what makes the authorities think they will take heed and stop when they see the blinking orange light? In fact, they speed faster when they see pedestrians waiting to cross at the zebra crossing. Some of them, usually motorcyclists, even scream at the pedestrians if they still insist on crossing. I stood by the roadside one day, just curious to see how many cars would actually stop and give way to pedestrians. Out of fifty cars (a rough estimate), one would stop at the zebra crossing. ONE!!! So much for world class mentality! On one occasion, a group of tourists was almost run over by a car. The car driver pretended nothing like happened and sped off. I was like what the @#$!??? I was so embarrassed by this incident.

So, if you are about to take up a job in this deadly area, good luck! And it is useful if you are agile and run really fast. Even better if you are bionic.

Kepada pihak DBKL dan polis trafik - Tolonglah buat sesuatu!