Here it is. This is in regards to yet another news article regarding traffic in my area (Seattle, Washington).
This will be a short rant.
I’ve long since concluded that our government, at least at the state level is continuing to put Education behind everything else.
Rather than do what I believe is necessary to really solve the root of the issue (the actual cause of traffic) the Seattle mayor is going to do what most all government officials do, throw more money at a problem and hope it prolongs it long enough that they don’t have to deal with it until the next Mayor is elected.
What’s the real cause of traffic? You and Me! Yep, it’s the drivers on the road. From what I can tell it’s mostly uneducated drivers that cause a lot of traffic, from following too closely (causing accidents), merging onto the freeway at 30mph rather than at 60mph. Simply going too fast in general or going too slow in the passing lane, not to mention not moving over (out of the way) of faster traffic. All of this and more causes traffic jams and results in unwarranted accidents.
I strongly believe that a healthy dose of driver education could fix a majority of these issues. On top of that, I firmly believe that we should have stricter licensing tests and more required classes, as well as yearly or bi-yearly (as an example) testing which would hopefully be more rigorous than a simple eye exam.
One argument I’ve had to combat against after posting up my ideas on my local news station website is, “Our country isn’t ready for mass transit, people NEED to drive to get places and there isn’t enough public transportation in place to harbor those who wouldn’t be able to get a license or who lose a license well early in their lives.”
Yes, a valid argument. However, thanks to this great country we live in a majority of our economy is based on Supply and Demand. This means that if there was suddenly a high demand for public transportation (helping the elderly who lost their licenses get to places like the grocery store on a weekly basis, for example) then the supply of these services would also rise. Thus making that argument a moot point. Actually, that might help the economy as well, creating more jobs.
Well, there’s my short rant on education is our past. We keep putting education behind us and hope that throwing a few hundred million dollars at problems will fix the issues. I don’t believe this is the right way to go. I think spending just a fraction of that amount of money on driver education would go much further and save many more lives (less accidents, more responsible drivers, etc).