Chadashot Bet Shemesh is reporting that Minister of Transportation Betzalel Smotritch recognized National Road Safety Awareness Day by holding a Knesset meeting about road safety issues.
During the meeting, MK Moshe Abutbol (Shas) presented an original idea, out of the box as he described it, to encourage people to be safer drivers.
According to Abutbol, millions have been spent in the past decades to fight against bad driving and traffic accidents. Coming from an educational background, Abutbol says, there is a concept of "sur mera v'aseh tov" - turn away from bad and do good. We have been working with a point system for a long time - use a phone while driving and you get points on your record in additional to a fine, drive without a seatbelt and you get points, etc. Now it is time to change direction and try a more positive approach.
MK Abutbol suggested that we should take a few million shekels and buy 20 new cars with that money. These 20 cars would then be raffled off among all Israeli residents that did not get a single traffic report during the previous year.
This would be similar to insurance companies lowering rates to drivers with good records.
Obviously this would be in addition to many other ideas being done on a day to day basis, such as improving the road infrastructure (Abutbol pointed to improvements in Bet Shemesh roads, specifically 38 and 10, that have lessened the number of road incidents as examples).
According to the report, Minister Smoritch appreciated the suggestion but said he prefers not giving out new cars but maybe Rav Kav cards instead, as he prefers less cars on the road and greater use of public transportation. Even if this specific suggestion is not implemented, the idea can be used in other ways by finding other positive ways to encourage drivers to drive safely.
So you might not get a free car by driving safely but hopefully they will come up with other benefits to encourage drivers with rewards. Or, with the government still in flux with no end in sight at this point, it does not seem unlikely that someone else will soon be Minister of Transportation and maybe the next one will like this idea and we will get the shot at a new car!
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