Bangkok Post article: Riding the middle footpath in Singapore

Don Sambandaraksa who writes for the Bangkok Post rode his bicycle in Singapore and concludes Singapore drivers are crazy. He also draws a connection between his ride and our programmed society being unable to cope with circumstances outside our neat existence.

First of all, I am not sure what road he rode on, but riding in Singapore is not THAT dangerous. There are crazy drivers in any part of the world, and bicycle riders need to learn to adapt to traffic conditions wherever they are. Not to say we can't improve cyclist safety measures here though (yes, I am referring to you, LTA).

Secondly, I found the connection he drew rather tenuous. Sure, we have rules, regulations and orderliness but that does not make our society less resilient. It takes a resilient people to survive and thrive under a government that is always trying to tell you what to do, ok?

Hey, at least our airport is still open.

Read his whole piece at the Bangkok Post. Thanks to reader dokistar for this link.

Excerpt:

In a nutshell, the usually boring, law-abiding, orderly Singaporean that is famous the world over turned into an aggressive, horn honking, engine revving crazy driver that is more fit for rush-hour Bangkok or Bangalore than Singapore. Moreover, it was an aggression that was totally uncalled for. I biked a lot in the UK, in Manchester, and have never seen this level of road rage before. Odd.

"They don't like others on their space," one of my local friends later told me over dinner. The drivers do not like anything different. They like the predictability, the order of being told exactly where they can go and what they can do.

Introduce something different, something without any rules and regulations, and the usually strict, orderly driver breaks down and reverts to his native, aggressive state, honking, revving and just displaying road rage at the poor biker because they do not know what else to do.

It was fun to infuriate these people, and to slowly cycle past them later as they got stuck in traffic. Strangely enough, there were almost no cyclists on the road apart from a few poor Indian cyclists on rickety old bicycles.

But it was after nightfall when the local bikers did come out and I began to realise how chaotic Singapore's biking scene can be. Almost nobody had lights on their bikes. Nobody was on the roads and nearly everyone was cycling on the footpaths. Some were cycling against the flow of traffic. Few were watching the cars around them. It was almost total chaos. Something was obviously not right.

There are two frameworks of law and order. One tells people what to do, the other tells us what not to do. Sounds simple. One tells us the centre path where we should walk and expects us not to stray far from it. The other shows us the limits of acceptable behaviour and we are free to do anything we please as long as we do not cross those limits.

Both sound reasonable, but in practice there is a lot of difference between a society that functions because it is programmed to, and another that functions freely within set boundaries. The difference lies in what we usually refer to as self-immunity.