Russian Roulette on the roads
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel
Whenever a horrible accident takes place on the roads here, we tsk tsk, say how horrible it is, and then go back to our daily death-defying adventures on the road.
The latest tragedy took place on Thursday when a minibus driver plowed through a train barrier into an oncoming locomotive near Kiryat Gat. Seven members of the Bernstein-Gotstein family from Beitar Illit were killed – Aryeh Bernstein, 43, and his wife Rivkah, 41, together with four of their children – their 21 year-old daughter, Malki Gotstein, who was pregnant, along with Mordechai, 9, Chaya 14, and Yochanan 16. Malki Gotstein’s one-and-a-half-year-old son, Mordechai, was also killed in the collision.
The driver of the minibus, Yashar Yeshurun, was injured in the crash
and was arrested while still hospitalized
“I have no explanation for this, I drive carefully,” he told police officers, as he reenacted the accident on Sunday.
“This will haunt me for the rest of my life, but people must know the truth is that I saw the train barrier only in the last seconds [before the crash] and could barely do anything, even press the brake pedal,” Yeshurun said.
According to police, however, Yeshurun was speeding as he approached the barrier, and was talking to one of the passengers – a deadly combination as it turned out.
A riveting account of the accident from the the point of view of a passenger on the train was published in The Jerusalem Post today, written by my friend Faye Bittker, a former colleague and currently a senior official at Ben-Gurion University. Her essay provides a harrowing look at the the grotesque and the mundane, and how the driving habits on our roads are affecting each one of us.
Like a scene from “The Poseidon Adventure,” confused passengers were left to figure out what had happened when their train from Tel Aviv to Beersheba came to an abrupt stop at 7:05 pm.
Outside, rescue crews had to deal with horrific wreckage and the death of a whole family. Inside, a full cast of clueless characters spent much of their time running up and down the aisles, though there was nowhere to go and very little we could do.
The train driver performed admirably in an otherwise impossible and tragic situation. He could not avoid hitting the minibus stuck on the tracks, but he did manage to slow the train and avoid injuries among the train’s passengers. Silence filled the air as the train lost power and stopped following impact. And then came a deafening organizational silence that left us all to our own devices – in this case, smart phones, digital radios and mobile computers – to figure out what was happening.
For two hours, from the moment of impact until we boarded another train, there was no official announcement or explanation about what had happened. No statement that there had been an accident.
It only gets worse the more you read, and leaves you wanting to scream out over the senseless loss of life.
Body shop makes a dent in insurance premiums
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Life
In a country where there’s nary a car that’s not pocked with dents, scrapes, and nicks, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have escaped being involved with any road accidents that required involving insurance companies. Until last week.
An older lady turned right at a stop sign, without really looking left, and sideswiped my car as I drove by. When we pulled over, I really wanted to wail on her, over how she typified the aggressive, sloppy Israeli driving style. But she was so apologetic and shaken up that I ended up telling her it wasn’t so bad and that she shouldn’t worry.
And it wasn’t that bad, just some paint scraped away, one door guard ripped off and a slight dent. I told her I would bring it to the body shop next door to my usual mechanic and see how much it cost. It the estimate was less than her NIS 1,000 deductible, which I was sure it would be, then we could avoid going through our insurance companies and the accompanying hassles.
The next day, I brought the car to the body shop and was given an estimate for NIS 1,600. So I tried a couple other places, but received similar estimates. Of course, at that point, the lady decided to go through her insurance company, which triggered a series of bureaucratic forms, faxes, phone calls and a visit to an accident assessor that over the next few days kept me busy for hours.
It’s an odd arrangement when the victim of an accident ends up having to do all the work to repair the damage caused by the other person. But that’s just a sideline to the main point here – yes, there is one.
I finally got the car repairs completed yesterday at the original body shop I went to and went to the office to settle up (I also didn’t know that I had to pay for all the repairs and accident assessor costs, and then file a claim with the lady’s insurance company to get reimbursed.)
When I asked the manager who to make the NIS 1,600 check out to, he said ‘no, that’s not how much it cost – it’s NIS 3,450.’
Now, I’m getting reimbursed anyway, but I couldn’t resist asking him, ‘You told me when I was going to do the repair privately that it would be NIS 1,600. You’re doubling the price because the insurance company is paying for it?’
He just shrugged and said the Hebrew equivalent of ‘That’s the way it is.’
Maybe I’m just naive, and this is the way of the world, not only in Israel but in most countries when it comes to insurance claims. But it just doesn’t seem right, does it. I’ve always wondered why our car insurance premiums are so outrageously high. And yesterday, I found out why.
Road carnage in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel
The aftermath of Friday's Beit Shemesh crash.
All the jokes about Israelis learning how to drive from manning tanks in the army, or that Israelis drive fast because of the hectic pace of life here have worn thin over the years. The fact of it is that Israelis are horrible, reckless drivers – and I’m talking a mass generalization here of an estimated 50-70% of drivers, not a manageable sub-sector minority.
Three examples. There’s a stop sign near the bus stop on the street next to my house. While waiting for the bus, I play a game of counting how many drivers actually stop, or even pretent to take their foot off the gas. 50% stop and the other 50% slow down a bit, look around and continue right through the intersection.
Example two are Egged bus drivers. Riding a bus home two or three nights a week on five miles of downhill highway (partially through a tunnel), I’m amazed at the speeds which the drivers achieve. As far as I know the speed limit is 80 km (55 miles per hour) but, the norm for Egged’s finest is more like 110 km (80 mph). Whenever I’ve queried the drivers (when I’ve been brave enough to open my eyes), they just laugh it off and say “Don’t worry, we’re fine, I’m in perfect control. You want to get home quickly, don’t you?”
The last example is on the Jordan Valley road (Ghandi’s Road) which goes south to north from near Jericho to Beit Shean. It’s got some hairpin turns through the hilly region, and the road isn’t too great to begin with.
The two or three times a year I travel on it at night, I make sure to keep to the speed limit of 80 kmh. Every single car flashes me and passes me (some on the hairpin turns).
I may sound like a crotchety, old driver, but enough’s enough. And the trend of driving while drunk, which until a few years ago was not really a factor in Israel, is like giving terrorists extra ammunition.
As long as drivers in Israel feel invincible and behave like the road is their personal domain, then we’re taking our lives in our hands each time we turn the ignition key. And it’s not just one segment of the population, although a higher percentage of accidents involve men, young drivers, and Arab drivers. But it’s a problem that faces all of us, and it’s not going to go away until everyone takes responsibility for themselves.
Technology for the Birds
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Technology, Travel
It almost sounds like a joke – something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, maybe. But “bird strikes” are apparently a serious problem for pilots and planes. That’s, apparently, what happened to a U.S. Airways jet that was forced to land in the Hudson River after taking off New York’s LaGuardia Airport minutes before. Nobody was hurt – amazingly – but in the battle between birds and pilots, humans haven’t always fared so well against avians. Luckily, Israel is on the case, working on ways to keep birds and planes away from each other!
According to experts, bird strikes – where a bird gets sucked into a jet’s engine, discombobulating the avionics (check out the photo of what an engine hit by birds looks like) – is not all that rare, and has plagued planes and even rockets. While not common in civilian aviation, bird strikes appear to be a near-plague for military flyers, according to this website which lists dozens of crashes, ejections, and even deaths of pilots due to bird strikes (at least two Israeli pilot deaths are listed). 
Because Israel is on the main north-south migratory route for birds, the IDF has been very concerned with bird strikes. According to the “Bird Strike Committee Proceedings” for 2002,
the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has focused attention in bird strike prevention on collisions between aircraft and migrating birds during low-level flight operations. Only in the last 2 years has the IAF begun to tackle the problem of reducing bird-aircraft collisions at or near airfields. A dramatic shift in thinking has led the IAF to initiate complete wildlife control programs at its airbases, featuring the employment of border collies and wildlife control officers to help eliminate the risk of wildlife collisions within the control zone (CTR) of each airfield.
As a crucial component of this program, the IAF has initiated major changes in habitat management at airfields, eliminating agricultural initiatives and undergoing large-scale modifications in airfield maintenance practices. Additionally, the IAF has altered flight and ground operations where possible to attenuate the risk imposed by birds and has coordinated efforts within various departments at each airbase to address bird strike control issues. Awareness and the resolve to eliminate wildlife hazards at its airfields are key features to the IAF’s new directive on bird strike prevention. Though still in its infancy, the IAF’s new wildlife control program has already shown dramatic improvements in the reduction of bird strike hazards at airbases.
My friends at the Fisher Institute in Herzliya have been on this problem as well, and have developed some new technology to ensure that both planes and birds can share the skies, that I hope to be able to report more about soon.
“Israel Stops”
Yesterday (November 25) was “Israel Stops” day – a day dedicated to promoting road safety in Israel. It was the culmination of a month-long ad campaign, in which several well-known media personalities (including one guy known for his promoting a traffic safety system) urged Israelis to take it easy on the road. At 7:30 PM, there was a “moment of silence to commemorate victims of the tragedies on the road,” followed by a concert in Tel Aviv, starring pop singer David Broza.
The event was sponsored not by the Transportation Ministry or police, but by a private group called “Or Yarok” (Green Light), which works to raise consciousness
among drivers to develop safe driving habits. Prior to the concert, Or Yarok outfitted the Nokia Arena in Tel Aviv with 11,000 paper doll cutouts, stand-ins for the 30,000 Israelis who have been killed in road accidents since the state’s creation.
Things have been getting better on the road safety front, Or Yarok says, thanks to new, modern highways, like Road 6 (“Cross-Israel Highway”), and new road infrastructure projects in the center of the country. Israel Radio reports most accidents on Israel’s roads, and the majority are not on the nice, new roads around Tel Aviv, but in outlying areas in the Galilee and Negev. There, narrow two lane roads without streetlights are the norm, and drivers in a hurry are tempted to take foolish risks, passing slower cars ahead of them in the oncoming traffic lane. Sometimes drivers calculate wrong and aren’t able to get back into their lane in time – and that’s when you hear about the accidents where drivers and passengers are injured, or worse. Add to that the usual percentage of bad drivers, like drunk kids and sleepy truck drivers, and you have a recipe for road tragedy – which is why, unfortunately, we need events “Israel Stops,” and visual reminders of all we have lost (like in the photo).
The most dangerous roads, based on accident statistics, really are country roads that have become inundated with drivers, due to the expansion of Israel’s population. Part of the latest economic rescue program (yep, Israel has them too!) includes billions of shekels to upgrade road infrastructure, which will presumably include some of these unsafe roads. Meanwhile, there are systems like this one, which help keep drivers on track with hi-tech sensors and wi-fi alerts. What if the government were to give a tax credit to everyone who installed a system like this in their car? Any Knesset members out there reading this blog?
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