The decision taken unanimously by Attard council to request that the speed camera in Notary Zarb Street be blinded is symptomatic of part of what is wrong in our civil society. The council members, it seems, gave in to pressure from people who do not wish to abide by the law.
By the same token, the Minister of Finance should abolish income tax because those who are caught evading it scream out blue murder. Similarly with VAT. And so on...
The speed camera had been installed on the street where we lived for around 30 years. The street became one of the busiest in Malta, serving mostly for through traffic. It also became one of the stretches - half a kilometre long in all - where many drivers sped through as recklessly as can be. Over the years there were numerous crashes, two of which resulted in deaths.
Attard council has been quite efficient since it was set up. It has spruced up and embellished the village where, some say, the marauding Saracens used to find refuge. It did not get round, however, to doing anything much about the chaotic, dangerous traffic situation that was very much in ugly evidence.
The compilers of the local development plan filled a gap that had not been touched on by the council. They carried out a traffic assessment of various parts, including Notary Zarb Street. They commented on the density of the traffic rushing through it daily and recommended, in the short term, traffic calming and, in the longer term, the construction of the Attard bypass.
That project had been on the drawing board for decades, but successive long periods of Labour and Nationalist administrations ignored it, though it was part of the Structure Plan. The authors of the local plan did not turn a blind eye.
They reiterated the dire need for the bypass and, in fact, proposed that the plans for it be revised so that it would be broadened. Among other things, they linked the proposal to the deterioration that was taking place in Notary Zarb Street.
I am not aware that Attard council ever spoke out to express agreement or disagreement with the bypass proposal, much less to press for it to be taken up. They did become part of one initiative on Notary Zarb Street. Pelican lights were installed in its middle, to be frequently ignored as irresponsible drivers tore through the red light.
Eventually, a speed camera was installed. It was linked to a generously brisk limit of 50 kilometres per hour, even though the stretch might be considered a contest for an urban speed limit of 35 km/h. The speed camera attracted fierce criticism from drivers who do not like to be given a legal limit to stick to, and to be punished when they break it.
Rather surprisingly, they were supported by sectors of the media who reported that the speed camera was busily clicking away to the chagrin of drivers, heavily implying that guilty drivers were suffering some injustice thereby.
Reintroduce my parallel regarding taxation - not only do we grumble that we have to pay it, but those who evade it and are caught yell blue murder. Apply the same logic to a vandal who gets caught, and cries out "Foul!" because he is punished. This logic is evident all over Malta.
When a speed camera was installed on Xemxija Hill many complained that the speed limit was set too low when one was going uphill. They may have had a point. In the majority, however, the critics were against speed cameras, full stop. Against, that is, any restriction deemed necessary to try to ensure safety on the roads.
For, lest anyone forgets, that is what speed limits and the measures taken to enforce them are about. The taxation factor in the parallel I am drawing reflects the requirement by any public administration, whatever its political hue, to raise revenue to provide public goods.
The parallel is insufficient and not strong enough when applied to the safety considerations inherent in speed limits.
At long last adverts long evident overseas are being shown in Malta as well demonstrating the difference a few kilometres/miles per hour make when breaking. They are not shown frequently enough to project the horrible potential consequence of even a small increase in speed.
These adverts, apparently, are not shown regularly to enough local councillors. Nor, it also appears, are councillors reminded of a basic fact of life - there is no such state as being a little bit pregnant.
Speed limits are determined on the basis of safety tests, related to the implications to car control and loss of it, to unforeseen events and the consequences of not being able to reduce speed or stop. Like the results of pregnancy tests, they either are, or are not.
There is a set limit: if you're within it, you're fine; if you exceed it, you break the law. Simple enough, one should think. Apparently the Attard councillors who were elected in the last local election do not think so. The report in Wednesday's The Times, which gave the news that the Notary Zarb Street speed camera had been turned off made an interesting revelation.
Prior to the suspension of the speed camera, there was an unofficial agreement between the Attard council and the operator not to issue tickets to motorists exceeding the 60 km/h limit. In other words, the local council instructed the operator not to consider a two-and-a-half-month pregnancy as a pregnancy at all. The council was prepared to accept that motorists broke the speed limit by up to 20 per cent.
In spite of this - The Times report said - many motorists were fined even for driving at 53 km/h or less. Again, the implication of this is that if you're a little bit pregnant you're not pregnant at all. The logic convinced the councillors. All of those elected by the good people of Attard succumbed to it.
In the recent election the large Nationalist majority got a slap on the backside and returned a council that has Nationalist, Labour and AD representatives. They united in an example of rare consensus to approve a motion that the speed camera be switched off, and that traffic calming measures be introduced instead.
The background to the decision given in The Times' report was that "in just seven months between July 2006 and last February" Lm156,555 in fines were collected through the Local Enforcement System, only a fraction of which went to the council. Last September, a total of 1,081 tickets were issued for speeding but the number had dropped to 129 last February.
It is not clear to what extent the drop in tickets for over-speeding was due to the speed camera. If the camera was responsible for saner traffic - one would have thought - the councillors should have united to request a few more in notorious stretches. They did not do that.
So now one has to start the count to see how long the pregnancy through a commitment to promote traffic calming will deliver the outcome. Perhaps one should not hold one's breath.
Five years ago I went along to a public meeting of Attard Council and, among other things, pointed out that in upper Triq il-Linja (where we had moved to) there was much over-speeding taking place, and suggested traffic calming should be considered.
The council members were sympathetic. But, they told me and the rest of the public, they could not install sleeping policemen. That stretch of Triq il-Linja is used by public buses and the ATD would not, therefore, allow traffic calming. The council did undertake to install signs showing the speed limit - 35 km/h.
Never mind that, when installing began, some of the signs were installed the wrong way round. That was not the council's fault and errors will happen. Fact was and remains that the limit is broken by practically every driver who passes by. Far worse than that, many drivers whiz through at double the limit or more.
In the space of a few weeks four traffic accidents have taken place in one of the main hot spots. Aside from the inconvenience wrought by excessive speeding, danger lurks on a road used extensively by pedestrians.
Attard council has not done anything about it. It installed a set of sleeping policemen at one end, but was lobbied to remove them. There was no effort to place small traffic islands in key spots. Nor was any explanation ever given why other localities, such as Lija, do install sleeping policemen in roads used by public transport vehicles.
I do not wish to single out Attard council for my criticism. Some or more of what is said or implied above is to be found in other localities as well. Breaking the speed limits is an every-minute occurrence. Dangerous overspeeding is evident not only in inter-town roads, but within village cores narrower and shorter than the streets of Attard underpinning my comments.
There is a crying need for a proper traffic management policy all over the island. Local councils can take initiatives - the Attard/Lija/Balzan councils, it was reported, are liaising to see what they can come up with. Local councils face funding constraints and are also very dependent on what the ATD allows them to do or not to do.
An updated national traffic management policy is more than necessary. The Transport Minister, rather than blatantly interfering with the ATD on whom to sack or not to sack, could do worse than use his remaining time in office to see to it that an action plan be drawn up. That will have to include participation by other ministries.
For instance, I do not believe that the Police motorcycle unit is very numerous, nor do I know how it is used. There certainly seems to be a case for the Minister of Finance to allocate financial resources to the Commissioner of Police to acquire a number of motorcycles, which would be used solely to be highly visible on our roads as a deterrent to overspeeding.
More resources also need to be allocated to deal with the difficulties that are growing in using our roads, due to a combination of very high and rising vehicle density and road works that have to be carried out, even if, by some miracle, they are carried out according to schedule.
Beating the drum of upgrading the roads system may be understandable, where upgrading is real and lasting. That by itself will not mitigate the growing traffic problem that bedevils the lives of drivers and pedestrians alike.