The Beribi Roundabout
My favourite and the number ONE Brunei cartoonist, Cuboiart - his latest cartoon is about the Beribi Roundabout. A roundabout, many people I know tried to avoid but unfortunately it is still the best way to get around the area. I tried to avoid it whenever I can. For instance going to Kiulap from Batu Satu, I would rather go through the small streets of RIPAS and Kiarong and emerging at the traffic lights near Jame'. Even to the point, I would rather go up to RIPAS and going back down the other way just to avoid the Beribi roundabout.However lately I noticed that it's not that bad using the roundabout. People are more careful and do use the right lanes. Our ministry's pet peeve is that there is one lane too many especially the one joining the road to the pasar area. So cars emerging from the Beribi area have to be contend with cars going to the pasar area as well as cars going down the highway towards Berakas.
Sometimes I wonder whether all those adverts issued by the Road Safety Council is effective given that it is shown on RTB. I watched RTB but I get the feeling that I am in the minority. So I do hope that the Road Safety Council keeps up their efforts in making sure that the rules are being informed to all road users. I think we have to use those giant billboards too. I remembered the most memorable one I saw many years ago in Jakarta was this - Keluarga Anda Menanti Anda Di Rumah - Your Family is Waiting for you at Home. I thought you can't get any more direct than that.
The interesting bit is that it is the Road Safety Council which coordinates traffic and transportation policies in the country. You see, engineering portion is handled by our Road Department at PWD, the enforcement is done by the Police and for commercial vehicle it is done by Land Transport Department and LTD also handled other related matters. These three agencies belong to three different ministries. No one has come up with a better model than the one done by the Japanese. They had the Traffic Management Agency which coordinates everything. Maybe we can try that one day.
Comments
Other country normally hired an agency to come out with such campaign & must work within the budget allocated.. which is the correct way! The agency will make sure the impact & budget was properly utilised even to the extent of pressing the media agency to provide them extra coverage or insertion. Reason also why they engaged advertising or PR agency is time. They dont want to waste they time by head cracking their head where they can do the other work.
It's been a while i havent seen any campaign here that really plan or work properly. Other things that we are always forget is following up or awareness to what have started earlier. Like what Cuboi did with the round about campaign really a good start. It really refresh everyone mind since everyday there will be new road user.
Just a thought!!!
My resolution to this is very simple: Split the first lane from the roundabout. Currently it is a hard solid line for first lane users, meaning drivers on first lane must keep to this lane only. So why put them as part of the roundabout?
A good example of my above resolution is the roundabout in beribi, near to the Beribi Fuel station.