Peter Leyssens wrote:
> I'll give you a story of Leuven, the city where I live, which should
> provide all French list members with yet another true joke about Belgians.
Madness is everywhere. My brother-in-law lives in a little Swedish town called
Trollhattan, where the local politicians decided their town should have the
lowest (=zero) rate of traffic deaths in Europe; they called it the "zero
vision". So they installed speed bumps absolutely *everywhere* and invited all
sorts of politicians and EU bigwigs to see it.
Then they discovered that the new environmentally-friendly buses they bought
were too low to go over the speed bumps, so they had to be used on routes that
did not pass through the town, and the old, stinky buses that had been used on
those routes had to be used instead. Also, if a bus did not creep over a speed
bump, the engine smashed on the speed bump. Lots of damage to buses. The bus
drivers started complaining about back trouble because of all the jolts.
Ambulance drivers complained that they had to go slow over the bumps, which led
to patients dying because they did not get into hospital in time, or their
injuries were made worse by the jolts, or worse because they did not get
treated in time, etc etc. Fire engines did not get to fires as soon, etc etc.
Have there been fewer deaths and less suffering thanks to the speed bumps?
Quite possibly not.
Jonas
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