Let’s discuss on something a little bit mundane today. We believe most of us had ridden or driven before on the road; so we can safely assume you must’ve had some sort of experience with that one pole on the road we call as traffic light. This piece of road equipment or whatever you wanna call it, is the one item that help controls the traffic flow on the road. Ever since the creation of the traffic light (dated back in 1912), people in general has been following the rules of traffic in a pretty decent way. But as a creature that has it’s own mind, us human tends to bend and break the rules to accommodate our own way of life.
A traffic light system or network are usually being erect on a traffic spot that is most likely to be extra-hazardous than any other place. This calls for an automated intervention so that the flow can be controlled and the risk of unwanted incidents may be reduced significantly. That ladies and gentlemen, is the first good thing that we earn from having a traffic light. There should be a research somewhere or a data collected by our local agencies that can pinpoint the safety effects on traffic light and it’s adherence. If there’s none, we will come up with our own sample here around our place of operation where a new network of traffic light currently being installed (we will come up with the observation later).
But did you know that a traffic light installation which are meant to reduce the broad side (bahagian tepi) collision on a risky junction can actually increase the chance of a rear end collision. It’s actually a kind of calculated or accepted risk that these people (assuming they are engineers) had come to agree when it comes to make a decision for a traffic light to be put on the road. Now that is something to think about eh? Apart from that, a traffic light also in our opinion serves as an indication to the level of our society in terms of moral and education. This is not official, but; the better adherence of people to a traffic light shows that they are a better society as a whole in general. What we can usually call as a first-class mindset. So if we would like to have a better society in the future, maybe it is time we all adhere to the traffic light.
This touches on the topic of “obedient”. Simply following all rules might not be a thing that we want to do; because we might as well be a robot in doing so. But then again, the rules are there to protect or serves us in a better way. In the subject of traffic light, we can learn a few things from it. Waiting for the red light to change green during a peak hour of the traffic is a no brainer, but doing so while there are no visible traffic counts as something else. Now that is pure obedient right? Thus, having a traffic light actually serves more than just as a regulator for the traffic; it also helps us in training of our moral compass. A person who successfully comply with the traffic light can improve his or her own decencies as a human being. But to those who consistently breaking the rules on other hand; will slowly deteriorate his or her own decencies which can led to an awful lot of things. That is why we’re seeing road rage and other nasty stuff happening on our society nowadays. We’re not saying “complying to a traffic light” causes it but we are pretty sure it counts as a factor too.
Following from all that, we can say that there are things that we can take positively from a very mundane piece of equipment on the road; traffic light. We know there are more to this discussion than what we just shared here; but writing it all in one go wouldn’t change much of our current situation anyway. We sure hope to see lesser people to ride or drive through a red light and not to forget those who are taking their own time to move once the red light turns green (like 5-10 seconds after the green light, oi cepat lah!). Traffic light is also the cause of traffic slow down and congestion; we’re sure all of us know that so please, do your part by not being the slowest one to take off. Share with us some of your insights towards the traffic light and the issues surrounding it, maybe we can help publish it in the future.
Malaysian Riders 