A SWITCH TOO FAR?

Dev Nadkarni


No controversy has preoccupied Samoa in recent times as the government’s plans to switch driving sides beginning from the seventh of this month. Since its announcement in 2007, there have been countless protests and campaigns throughout the country to get the government to rethink the plan, all of which have fallen on deaf ears.
It has been quite clear for a while now that the plan to switch driving sides is a pet project of Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi who believes the switch will make it easier for Samoans living in Australia and New Zealand to send their cars back home.
His reasoning is that more people would be able to afford cars especially in the rural areas because of the switch.
This line of thought is clearly an extension of the idea of the remittance driven economy. Remittances are Samoa’s major revenue earner (like several other islands economies): Samoans living abroad send millions of dollars back home every year. Now they can send cars as well.
Going by the level of protests over the past 18 months or so, clearly an overwhelmingly great number of Samoans do not share this view.
They rightly fear risking life and limb on the country’s narrow roads that often hug the undulating coastline, therefore throwing blind corners in the path every so often. 
This is not the first time countries have switched driving sides—the last time this happened was in the 1960s and 1970s when some African countries did so and so did Sweden.
But there was sound reasoning at work in those cases: all those countries did this was for reasons of conformity with the driving patterns of their closest neighbours with whom they share borders in their landlocked geography (former British colonies Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Ghana, have changed from left to right-hand traffic, mainly because they share borders with former French colonies, which drive on the right). This has mainly been done in the interests of uniformity and safety as vehicular traffic constantly keeps traversing political borders.
It is worth noting that even this compelling logic has not led countries in Asia to follow suit. Malaysia, for instance, which drives on the right shares borders with several countries that drive on the other side. Despite heavy traffic between itself and these neighbours, it has held on to driving on the side that it has always done.
But Samoa, unlike those countries is insular and turns out to be perhaps the only country that has based its rationale for changing driving sides on the premise of being able to import cheaper cars from its two big Western world neighbours.
That logic is hardly compelling and the high level of opposition from most people to the move, therefore, is completely understandable.
The main pressure group opposing the move People Against Switching Sides (PASS), has rightly raised concerns for public safety in view of inadequate preparation and education for drivers about the change. Bus operators too have had to contend with enormous costs of changing the side of passenger doors. The car rental industry, which is significant in Samoa because of its reliance on tourism has also expressed concern at the implications the switch will have on its operations.
Governments spend years contemplating, studying and debating proposed changes in even the smallest of driving rules.
The left-turn-give-way rule, for instance, which is now a relic only in New Zealand and defies all logic is still to be changed because of fears for safety and the level of driver education and awareness that would need to be generated.
The debate has raged on for years. Contrast this with the Samoan government’s decision to rush through the change in a timeframe of a mere two years.
Fears of those protesting the switch and the anger expressed by some villages as reported in the media are not hard to justify.
If people consider the costs of the switch enormous in terms of the transport industry having to reconfigure their vehicles largely on their own steam with little or no assistance from the government, the post-switch costs are likely to be even greater—and will go beyond mere monetary costs.
It will be no surprise if the number of casualties spikes in the first few months after the switch.
This will only seek to increase insurance payouts and therefore the premiums people will have to pay.
Several questions arise: has the government initiated enough awareness programmes? Has it anticipated the likely increase in road accidents? And has it primed the country’s medical infrastructure to meet with the likely higher rate of emergencies? Does it have adequate serious crash units in place? What about prosecutions in the case of errant driving? Will the government treat cases differently or more leniently in the changeover period giving the benefit of the doubt to violators of the new rules?
Most importantly, what about pedestrian education and educating children about walking facing the traffic?
From the level of protests it is clear that the majority of the public does not favour the switch—a fact that is bound to reflect on their driving habits.
They would have taken to the new rules reluctantly and without adequate preparation.
It will be naïve for the authorities not to expect problems in regard to all these questions at least in the first few months of the changeover.
It is anybody’s guess if the government has done cost benefit analyses of what is likely to be gained by being able to import cheaper or free vehicles as against the costs of switching driving sides. Also, the rationale that the driving switch will encourage more cars in Samoa runs counter to what most countries are trying to do—curb cars in favour of public transport.
Pacific Islands administrations are not known for their high standard of maintenance of public infrastructure especially in the transport sector as was unfortunately demonstrated by the tragedy of the sinking of the Princess Ashika in neighbouring Tonga last month. It is hoped the switch in Samoa will not turn out to be another wanton disaster for road users.