The Kingdom’s roads are among the most dangerous in the world. Road safety campaigns in other countries stress that a motor vehicle is a lethal weapon if driven without due care and consideration. Yet despite regular attempts by the authorities to educate drivers the number of wrecks continues to increase, leaving dead and injured in their wake.
This shameful situation is exacerbated by the attitude of the police, who, as reports indicate,. tend to round up anyone who might have been involved or seen an accident and take them to a police station for questioning. The sort of investigation at the scene with traffic cops taking statements and witness-contact details there and then while measuring, photographing and otherwise recording the wreck with a view to possible prosecution all too often seems alien to our investigators. Their unsubtle approach, in which entirely innocent bystanders who have actually seen nothing can sometimes be caught up in the investigation, has long proved counterproductive.
It puts people off doing their duty as citizens or residents because they know it could involve them in serious inconvenience, if not worse. The case of the farmer who found a dead man, called the police and was promptly arrested and questioned himself for two months, accused of murder is startling evidence of poor police investigative techniques. Of course, it was right that the man should be treated as a suspect, but while the police focused on him, the real killer was not even being considered. The farmer, not surprisingly, now feels that if he finds himself in similar circumstances, he will ignore the problem and avoid a further unpleasant involvement with the police. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Recently, a 16-year-old girl was found bound and gagged and dumped — thankfully alive —- on Jeddah’s Corniche. The Good Samaritan who found and assisted the girl told Arab News that despite his repeated attempts to get people to help, passers by did not want to get involved.
Such an attitude is wrong. Common humanity demands that anyone witnessing a crime, or finding a person in distress, or being in the proximity of a road accident in which someone is injured, should immediately see what he or she could do to help. And the reward for such civic duty should not be arbitrary detention and being caught in an ensuing web of legal complications.
Police often have a difficult job, especially at road accidents where people may be loudly accusing each other of blame. But by discouraging people from getting involved in helping crime or accident victims, the current procedure is actually making the job of the police that much harder. Effective enforcement of traffic laws will make our roads safer. Effective treatment of witnesses will reinforce that task by enabling bad drivers to be prosecuted. The current blunt and unsophisticated police methodology at road traffic accidents and crime scenes is totally unsatisfactory and needs thorough revision.
