This video is ~7 minutes of pure horror to anybody into traffic management. A Lebanese YouTuber (Nash Suleiman) recorded his journey in and out of Beirut (from and to Choueifat as it shows) and documented the violations people and himself do everyday.
This video also incidentally proves that relying on the new traffic law alone to reduce road accidents is utter bullshit. As Nash mentioned at the end, safer roads is a responsibility that each and everyone of us has to bear.
The traffic management center in Lebanon recently installed some red light cameras around Beirut in order to enforce traffic laws by automatically photographing people who run red lights or those who stop their cars on red AFTER the white stop bar. In their first tests, they unsurprisingly were able to record a violation every 8 seconds!
However, while the installation of these cameras is just logical in order to ensure the new traffic law is fully applied, you cant but feel that it is an ill-timed step… I mean let’s be honest, the majority of those who apply for a driving license show up on their test day to sign some papers and end up getting their license no matter how poor their knowledge about traffic laws is, and I really doubt most drivers are aware that you’re not supposed to stop the cars after the white bar on a red light. In fact, if you abide by this rule don’t be surprised to see people cutting you off and stopping in front of you…
The ultimate purpose for applying traffic rules is to reduce road accidents and avoid traffic jams. So it it were up to me, I would have allocated this project money to educate the masses and recruit additional police officers to ensure that the basic laws are applied. Till now, wherever you go in Beirut you see taxi cars and minibuses picking up passengers wherever they please on the road. Moreover, double parking is like norm everywhere… solving these two problems alone should guarantee making the traffic smoother all over the city. Let alone other problems caused by asshole motorbikers and pedestrians who insist on crossing the road no matter what color is the traffic light.
But then again, someone now thinks it is time to erect these cameras regardless of any other priorities, so brace yourselves, tickets are coming!
Every now and then photos like the one above surface on the internet and people start showering the Lebanese police and governmental employees in general with criticism.
No one is sure yet how authentic this photo is since the ISF hinted on twitter that the policeman might have done this stunt on a closed highway as part of some training. It would be really ugly if it turns out to be true, I mean this is the kind of stuff you expect zouzou ebba guys to be pulling on the highway, so having this officer acting the same way is just plain unacceptable…!
But thinking about the photo and the reactions it got for a moment make you realize it actually sums up the hypocrisy in our society…
The man is basically in charge of fining those who violate the law by performing such stunts, yet he enjoys doing them himself! Likewise, we tweet myriads of photos showing ISF officers texting on duty, while we fail to drop our phone when driving. We even argue that the new traffic law should allow us to check our phone on red lights!
We report tens of ISF officers on motorcycles without helmets, yet we also hate to wear them because it’s too hot and they mess our hair! We also break twitter writing about people bruning red lights around the city, but we are of course allowed to do it after 10PM because we know better. Oh and the best of all we also hate when people take advantage on us through “wasta”, but we absolutely have no problem using the same “wasta” to break the rules too!
So yeah, the photo is still ugly, and the officer still deserves to be punished for it, but next time you see something similar, don’t react as if it’s something out of this world, because what you will be seeing is just a reflection of this hypocrite society we live in.
