Stop polluting & start stopping – Do you get riled when you see drivers coast through stop signs, as if they were just a “suggestion?” Some experts think that stop signs are part of the problem instead of a solution. And taxi drivers in China may be playing loud radios but at least they’re breathing again.
According to Canadian traffic expert Said Easa, intersections with stop signs can be some of the deadliest places on the road. In 2005 the Ministry of Transportation reported 62,000 crossing and turning collisions at stop-sign controlled and other types of intersections throughout Ontario, resulting in nearly 150 deaths and approximately 16,000 injuries. That’s nearly five times the number of fatalities as rear-end collisions in the same year.
Easa says, “When you want to cross a road or make an angular turn, you must judge the speed of the oncoming vehicle, estimate how fast it will reach the intersection, and compare that to your own ability to safely accelerate and maneuver. It’s very difficult to do, especially for older people. Their perception-reaction time is slower than younger drivers.” So what’s the solution: no stop signs and only traffic lights instead? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, When China cleaned up its air pollution for the 2008 Olympics, the people who got the most benefit from this were not the athletes, they were the taxi drivers.A new study links the relationship between exposure to fine particulate matter in polluted air to heart attacks in taxi drivers in Beijing, China before, during and after the 2008 Olympics and proves what the rest of the world already knows: Air pollution leads to heart attacks.
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