Death by Driving - Not a Sweet Ending!

Death by Driving – Not a Sweet Ending!

I remember sitting in the front seat of my dad’s two seater sports car alongside my sister, with my brother squashed in between ours and my father’s seat. No seatbelts - no problem. The police never stopped us. Nobody shook their heads in dismay or disgrace. Did anyone even notice? That was 1980.

More than 30 years on and the same action would be deemed barbaric - in Europe that is and most likely any other western country. But not Turkey. Not even on the European side is due respect given to seatbelts.

By the mid-eighties in London, government campaigns hit the screens with the same impact as a head against a windscreen and people started to wear their seatbelts in the front. By the nineties the law changed again – people were now required to wear them in the back. By then I was in my late teens: experienced enough to have a rough understanding of how the system worked but not mature enough to understand that I was not immortal. It wasn’t until the hard hitting goverment campaigns did I, along with my peers and a vast majority of other’s from all generations, start to respect the law laid out to protect its people and begin to wear seatbelts in the back too.

One of the campaigns that most affected me was a commercial that showed a family in a car: the mother in the driver’s seat, daughter in the passenger seat and son sitting in the back seat behind the mother. Both the mother and daughter were wearing seatbelts, but the son was not. The happy family scene came to a sudden halt when a car hit them from behind and the son’s face smashed into the back of the mother’s head. The frame showed the boy silently in shock, his nose and mouth covered in blood. This image was not nearly as traumatic as the terrifying screams from the daughter, who unscathed from the accident and held firmly in place by her seatbelt, looked towards the mother. The fear in the daughter’s eyes pierced my heart, bursting my immortal bubble – the mother was dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SEy_FCJlpk&NR=1

From there after drivers began to ask passengers to wear seatbelts. People began to take responsibilıty. Lives were saved.

In crashes, unbelted rear passengers increase the risk of belted front seat occupants' death by nearly five times!

Over the years, in the UK there have been numerous campaigns to educate the public on the dangers of drink driving, not wearing seatbelts, using unlicensed cabs, and using mobile phones whilst driving; resulting in lives being saved, less injuries, murders and rapes. The effect of being in a culture where the law is enforced , coupled with the information to back up the benefits of this law enforcement, led to the evolvement of another level of maturity - something which is missing in Turkey.

Recently I was in the back of a car wearing my seatbelt. My five year old student was next to me refusing to wear his. I was shocked when his guardian didn’t insist, making the claim that if an adult was by his side then they could hold onto him. I have no idea where this guardian got the notion that I was a superhero: fast and strong enough to hold onto the child in the event of a crash whilst driving at speeds exceeding 80 KMH.

On a number of occasions I have seen children wandering in the back seat as if it were a playground, babies sitting loosly in the arms of their carers and nobody wearing a seatbelt. Often the same image would show the driver talking or texting on the phone, perhaps even over the drink limit.

Drink driving is just another driving violation that many people ignore, especially if they have the means to pay off the police. The fact that you can pay off the very people who are there to enforce the law makes a mockery of it.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing one day when a man whose child I tutored, casually mentioned in front of his son, that he got stopped in his car by the police on a random spot check. These spot checks rarely happen in the UK, and I wonder why that is. Would it be considered an infringement on people’s rights , or is it that the police have other more professional means for getting their bonus?

This parent had money and lots of it. His car was flash, and I suspect in this case, the police saw dollar signs. The parent was stopped and given two choices : 1) to take the breathalyser and risk being fined the standard 1000 YTL (500 Euro) if he was over the limit; or 2) pay the policeman 500 YTL (250 Euro) to not take the breathalyser. The chances of him walking off without having to pay a thing were slim since he HAD been drink driving , so he paid the officer. It sickened me to think that his or any other persons (or peoples) lives were only worth 500 YTL.
Six months down the road, and I became the vomit I so eagerly criticized when I rode in a car with a driver I knew had been drinking. It was a Land Rover, so I felt safe. I was drunk, so I felt immortal. In truth, I was just stupid. We got stopped by the police and this time I was not surprised when my friend paid off the officer and we went tipsily on our way. By the time I got home the whole drama had sobered me up somewhat, and I was furious wıth myself.
The idea of drink driving seemed so ancient to me. Of course it does still happen in Europe, but it is not looked upon lightly. Turkey is way behind on this one.

One driving violations which is slowly being more and more condoned in both Europe and America, is driving whilst using your mobile phone. But I guess in a country like Turkey where drink driving hasn’t been tackled after all these years, then driving whilst using your mobile phone never will.

It horrified me that after three years of living here how easily I (albeit reluctantly) accepted these violations to the point of no longer being shocked by them. What was even worse was that I became apathetic and just like the majority of the Turkish people, did not actively do anything to challenge it.

I was only reminded of the shocking quality of these violations when friends from the UK came to visıt me and were exposed to the hazards of driving or being a passenger in a car in Istanbul. Most recently when some friends of mine arrived from London and took a taxi from the airport to my house, they told me how they had been frightened for their lives as there were no seatbelts in the back, the driver drove like he was a participant in the game console ‘Need for Speed,’ and to top it off he was texting whilst driving. During the journey one of my friends (a London turk like myself ) suggestively questioned the safety issue at hand, whereupon the taxi driver brushed him off sayıng, he did it all the time; it wasn’t dangerous. Only when my friend insisted, did the driver put his phone down. But he did not slow down.

Nobody seems bothered by any of these driving violations in Turkey, which leads me to believe that when you have grown up with something a certain way, it starts to appear normal. Even things that don’t feel right or you know are dangerous, you accept.

I too accepted it, continuing to live here and do nothing to change it, until I suffered first hand for not exercising my duty to make this country a better and safer place.

Two weeks ago I was in a car accident whilst in the back of a taxi that had no seatbelts. The driver was doing the mandatory breaking the speed limit drive and miscalculated a turning. We crashed into the barriers, and I was flung around the car like doll, my head smashing through the opposite passenger seat window. The whole window shattered and my head got cut and bruised. Thankfully, even though I needed stitches, I was not seriously hurt.
My grateful response to being let off lightly turned to anger when I realised that had I had the option to wear a seat belt, I would have and would not have suffered a head trauma. The fact that there are seatbelts in the back of cars , not made available in taxi cars (as they are often inaccessibly hidden behind the seats) infuriated me. For a long time I felt I had no choice - but I do have a choice.

I decided to try to investigate by asking the taxi drivers, why the seatbelts were hidden . All of them came up wıth the same answer, ‘Nobody uses them, so what is the point. ‘ They also added that is was the passengers who complained that they are inconvenienced by the seltbelts.
With my stitches newly removed, these comments only added insult to injury. So really, what are my options? To not ride in taxi’s? Or should I do something more, like campaign to have the right to be protected. But to whom?

The truth is I just don’t know where to begin. All the people I talk to tell me it will amount to nothing in a country where so may human rights are at odds. There is so much injustıce, and to make matters worse people are not empowered by the very nature of being in a corrupt, injust system, to believe they can make a difference. But surely where lives are at stake, it is worthwhile to make the effort.

Personally, I would like to see the law changed in Turkey so that people are required to wear seatbelts in the back of cars. But then again without the enforcement of that law, if this did happened would it make a difference?

To this day I would take a guess that less than fifty percent of drivers in Istanbul wear seatbelts in the front, when the law already requires them to do so.

The change has to come from the people themselves. They need to be shocked just like I and many others were by the advertising campaigns that the UK government enforced to educate its people to the dangers of driving violations. The Turkish government also have a duty to do this.

‘The fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order. It is an organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects’ ( Wikipedia). In some sense it could be compared to a parent figure. If the parent acts responsibly and in the best interest of the child, then one hopes that the child grows up healthy and balanced.

But what happens when the parent is negligent? Then children are often forced to take matters into their own hands, often without the proper resources , guidance and information. They don’t learn to make good choices for themselves. Life is just harder and though hardship can often inspire innovation, it is questionable when lives are at stake.

Having come from a culture where people have the power to influence government – where the ‘parent body’ listens and reacts to make positive change, it hurts living here, AND I have the choice to leave. I have the priviledge of knowing another way; I have the belief that I can be a part of a process of change – something my dear Turkish comrades do not have.

Ultimately in Turkey the government is the negligent parent, not educating or protecting its children. Furthermore it is guilty of silencing its children with the fear of punishment and dehumanisıng them wıth the stripping of their rights. All of this amounts to abuse. So much needs to change at a core level. There is much work to be done. Who is going to do it?

Are you?

PS. If anybody still needs convincing that seatbelts save lives, then see this hard hitting advert :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Qhmdk4VNs&feature=related