From ‘Speeding deaths: Consider capital punishment’ 21 July 2010, ST Forum
(Ivy Singh-Lim):…Drivers who speed do not realise that they are part of a killing machine. Speeding is a fatal menace and should be much more policed than it is now.
During my 45-minute journey from Kranji to Suntec City, I did not spot a single police patrol car or Traffic Police motorcycle.
Speed traps are too few and far between, allowing irresponsible drivers to bolt and swerve on expressways unpunished.
…Fines and imprisonment may not be enough of a disincentive.
The punishment which will effectively deter speeding is caning.
And if a driver’s speeding is responsible for a road user’s death, then hanging is a fair punishment for killing someone.
No, hanging is not fair punishment for killing someone considering that speed deaths are almost entirely accidents, though criminals here are hanged for far less fatal offences like drug trafficking etc. As if the death penalty hasn’t drawn enough international flak already, now we have Ms Singh-Lim advocating hanging not serial killers, not drug kingpins, but ordinary citizens like you and me who on any bad day, given the most unlucky sequence of circumstances, can jolly well run down anyone even if we obey the speed limit. Or how about screeching to a stop just in time in front of an elderly person who then happens to drop dead from a cardiac arrest, does that deserve hanging? Or knock-on effects of tailgating drivers swerving to avoid collisions only to kill some other unlucky bystander? One doesn’t need to be a criminal lawyer to know that delineating the guilty party/parties in a mangled six-car fatal collision is like trying to dig the right sized hole in Orchard Road to contain the floods. A hard-nosed but ultimately, one of those ‘blunt instrument’ suggestions that fails to sound the slightest bit intelligent at all.
This article on the other hand ( ‘Time speed limits on roads were revised’, 2 Jan 1980 ST Forum) argues that speed limits were too low at the time, indicative of how our ‘speed of life”,exemplified by our traffic behaviour, has increased within 30 years. No police officer in his right mind would pull over any vehicle cruising at a scorching 70 kmh these days.
Filed under: 1980s, 2010, Justice system/Lawsuits, Motorists, Police officers Tagged: | death penalty, justice system, Motorists, Police officers, traffic police
Hmm, if caning deters the speeders, I guess it will only deter the male speeders. So half the speeders will still be on the roads!
So where do the deterred male speeders go? To our already bursting at the seams MRT!