the most vicious war of all..

a bust stop with a gear box depicting a disabled sign in the sixth gear.. a la speed kills..
a car key morphed into a military armoured tank style vehicle.. on the side of a main south telaviv artery,,

eath by road accidents is probably the number one behavioural source of death in my country.. sometimes i wonder what would happen if we poured the same number of billions into road safety as we do into military might.. ok i know thats stupid.. the obvious argument is that the military investment yields a relatively lower number of deaths with grace to its extent rather than in spite.. but still.. if this is currently the state of affairs then surely it deserves more attention..

and it turns out the state has given it the attention revealing a staggering finding of severe disproportionality between the jewish and non jewish sectors in terms of the fatalities..

the causes have hollistically been attributed to various issues that themselves could also be characterised by both state originating and demographically sourced factors..

take for example the cause of road infrastructure.. if arab towns dont have good roads its because either the municipality isnt investing in the roads and/or because they havent got the money.. why dont they have money? because people either arent paying and/or arent paying enough.. why is this? because they are either evading and/or not registering home extensions culminating with a mismatch between the incoming and outgoing cashflow..

as a result - people are dying on the streets - quite literally.. the fact that hundreds of people are dying in cars and not on the sidewalks or in their own houses should not dim our senses.. arab lack of societal participation is killing hundreds of arabs.. its that simple..

the state on its part needs to stop accepting this as a status quo.. this cannot be "their" problem.. this needs to be cleaned up.. brought into line and regulated once and for all..

the signs above were placed around telaviv.. they should be everywhere.. as should speed cameras.. as should traffic police.. there should be a dense net of traffic tribunals set up to alleviate the stress on the judicial system and the judges should be granted a terrifying degree of authority to prospecute offenders.. the police should be retrained to do their job properly.. and they should be taught how it is supposed to work..

i once received a fine because i tried to merge into a lane and ultimately turn right.. so vicious were the drivers that i failed to merge over a stretch of 300 metres and ultimately managed 20 metres before the turn of the turning lane.. i was fined 250 shekels.. when in so many other countries the other drivers would have received fines for not giving way..

we have a gruesome war on the streets that we fight every day to get to work and home.. and here again if we look at the causes rather than just the symptoms maybe we can spot that the israeli model needs reform.. maybe we cant continue being the way we are.. roadside manner is such a cultural mirror and clearly we disregard life and prioritise our ego in a way i have never seen anywhere else in the world.. we clearly have some serious work to do on our attitudes..

maybe if the palestinians examined their participation issues and we reviewed our lack of respect issues we might end up finding that there are more solutions to our mess than we realise..