By Farouk Gulsara
Here I am, waiting in my car, clutching my steering wheel. It has been a good five minutes, and I am at a standstill. There are no vehicles in front of me. It is a T-junction with traffic lights. There is no traffic on either road, but I have no choice. I have to wait.
It does not matter whether I have a medical emergency or that there is a raving lunatic after my scalp. Laws are laws and have to be obeyed. Logical wisecracks and rationalisations do not work. Realistically, if the road is clear and there is no imminent danger of a collision, I should be good to go. Logically, that is. Reasoning does not work here. A set of closed-circuit systems records your every wrong move like a hawk. And diligently, the system would send a ticket directly to your mailing address, and viola, the rule of law prevails in the land. A potential offender is snipped in the bud. As the broken window theory of criminology dictates, getting away with minuscule wrongdoings would eventually snowball into something cataclysmic. Thank God for automation; another serial offender has been prevented. Everyone should be happy, right? So, everyone’s job is just to follow?
That is when my Dionysian mind grew antennas. My grey cells started buzzing, and their neuroelectric activities went on an overdrive.
The system is understandably flawed. At a time when everything is becoming more intelligent, something is not correct. What is naturally lacking is artificially enhanced. Artificial intelligence has superseded natural stupidity. If self-thinking automatons and machines can improve by self-learning and pass the Turing Test, why not our traffic lights?
Intelligent traffic signal lights are not alien to road traffic controllers worldwide. Automated light changes to keep up with altering traffic volume are nothing new. Many developed nations have been implementing this for ages. At an age when we are concerned about vehicle emissions worsened by repeated stops and starts, introducing the ‘green wave’ could help reduce congestion and the need to repeatedly slow down or stop at lights.
Returning to my situation at the traffic light, I am still stationary after what feels like ten minutes.
Coming to think of it, Adolf Eichmann and all his colleagues in the Schutzstaffel (SS) completed all their nefarious activities by being sticklers for rules and followers of protocols. By paying undivided attention to completing their paperwork and targets set for the day, they gave a new perspective on how banal evil can be. The rule of law did not prevent a maniacal figure like Hitler from being the Fuhrer. The citizens who followed the herd in not questioning the status quo lived to regret their apathy.
Spending less time at the traffic light is not going to prevent a Holocaust, but we should ask ourselves to change a system that does not work for us. We are already wasting enough time listening to guised automated messages, which actually eat on your phone bills, why do we need to waste time, petrol and sanity by just waiting and listening to screaming cicadas at a traffic junction without any traffic?
Honk, honk! Time for me to move on…
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Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blogRifle Range Boy.
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