For the second time in six days, an accident has caused death and injury after a vehicle ran out of control and ploughed into a crowd.
In Central, last Thursday, three pedestrians died and 11 were hurt. On Tuesday, a bus careered into a Mongkok shop front, knocking down 12 people and killing a man.
It is useless to pretend that any measures can make the streets totally safe for the crowds thronging them day and night. Wherever there is traffic, there will always be accidents. In such a congested place as urban Hong Kong, sometimes with narrow roads and pavements, vehicles are never more than an arm span from people walking at the kerbside. That explains why vehicles kill more pedestrians than they do drivers and passengers each year. The Road Safety Council reports that 55 per cent of the 262 people killed last year were pedestrians, as were almost 28 per cent of the 19,100 casualties.
The surest way to cut this toll is to separate traffic from people. That might be done by building more footbridges, erecting more impact-absorbing barriers and, possibly, by closing some crowded shopping streets to vehicles completely.
The unwritten rule of traffic authorities the world over has been to give precedence to the car. Everything is done to speed vehicle flow rather than improving conditions for pedestrians. A change of emphasis to make some city streets quieter and safer is overdue. A feasibility study could be conducted to see if there are ways to re-route traffic in busy areas so that they can be turned into shopping precincts.
Every built-up district in Hong Kong deserves at least one oasis where people can stroll, free from fumes and noise. This will, it is true, increase the volume of cars on other roads. But the final question, which has to be faced, is how to deter motorists from using cars in congested areas altogether.
