The Brussels police authority, which is widely known and highly regarded for not only its ambitious and strict enforcement of traffic rules, but also 100% compliance by its own force, announced on the 30th of May a further step to reduce traffic accidents and thus improve road safety. In the presence of the Brussels traffic minister the director of the authority explained at a brief press conference that as of 2 June car drivers are required to park on and block access to zebra crossings.
An additional 150 traffic police will patrol the streets of Brussels. Car drivers that use a free parking space that is less than 500 meter away from an unblocked crossing can be fined up to € 800. A spokesperson for the authority clarified afterwards that both policy-makers and the policy force were unanimous in their verdict that existing rules have failed to significantly reduce reckless behaviour by pedestrians, particularly parents with prams, children, wheel chair users and elderly people, and that therefore, unfortunately, car drivers needed to be legislated too.
Only last year a law was introduced to prevent pedestrians from crossing the street immediately after the relevant traffic light jumps from red to green. Instead, pedestrians are required to wait for a further twenty seconds to allow car drivers to drive through the red light when in a hurry, feeling stressed, or testing car performance. There have been many occasions where enforcing police officers were mocked and pelted with, for example, baby food bottles and dirty diapers or even attacked by lap dogs belonging to pensioners. This pedestrians specific law, the spokesperson insisted, has been almost as widely broken as the 2001 first zebra crossing law, which also targets pedestrians by forbidding them to use such a crossing if a car can be seen approaching, either from near-by or a great distance.
The spokesperson concluded by saying that the policy authority had great faith in the cooperation from car drivers. Based on evidence obtained from all across Brussels Planet Lasse can confirm that one day before the law will enter into force car drivers' commitment, and cooperation and thus compliance, impressively led by Ixelles commune employees on duty, is already exemplary.
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1 comment:
There have also been rumours about introducing a penalty for pedestrians who demand the right to pavement access despite the fact that this space is dedicated for "on demand parking" or for the use of builders' skips and unwanted household garbage......
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