Red Light, Green Light

 

Photo: Nairobi Wire, 1 Aug 2013

“Have you noticed that people have started stopping for red lights?”

We were speaking with some acquaintances during a concert intermission the other night, comparing notes about our holiday travels. Like us, this couple had celebrated Christmas and New Years abroad, and they had returned to Kenya to find that a major change had occurred in the traffic practices of Nairobi drivers.

Traffic lights are not very common along the streets of Nairobi. In fact, any kind of lighting is rare. But new digital stoplights have been installed in over 20 major intersections, including the large traffic circles by the central business district (our downtown, known as the CBD) and a few other key spots. These tend to be places where traffic is especially bad during peak hours, and jams of over one hour are not unusual.

The lights are equipped with those countdown numbers that tell you how many seconds until the light changes from red to green. Following some strange law of physics, they are some of the slowest seconds you’ll see tick by.

Though the new lights have been up for 6 months, until recently they were almost entirely ignored. In fact, those of us tempted to obey the traffic lights – especially the instinct to stop at a red one – were quickly dissuaded by the behaviors of other drivers. To stop at a red light was to put yourself seriously at risk of being rear-ended, or worse. And of course, during rush hours, the traffic cops take over the job of snarling traffic, making the switching of red to green to yellow completely meaningless.

Just before the holidays, we received emails from the ever-vigilant UN/International Organizations’ networks warning that traffic cameras had been installed across the city, including at all the stoplights, and rules would now be enforced. It says something that a move to enforce basic traffic rules is big news. But if the result is less anarchy and better traffic flow, so be it.

For nearly 20 years, I worked on public health issues, including how to encourage better habits to improve well-being and lower risks of disease, disability, or death. We analyzed how to replace bad behaviors with better ones, when were opportune times to encourage positive changes, and how to not only transmit health promotion messages but also get people to act upon them.

Driving behaviors are just as hard to change as health ones. Presumably, one has to learn the rules to pass a driver’s test and obtain or renew a license, but you wouldn’t know that by the way people ignore basic traffic rules here.

The fact is, traffic habits are very much tied to groupthink. If the majority of people are breaking rules – by speeding, ignoring traffic signals, overtaking on blind turns, never using a turn signal – chances are others will join in. It’s an interesting example of the prisoner’s dilemma lesson they taught us in public policy school. Everyone would be better off if they all cooperated. There would be fewer jams, wrecks, and frazzled nerves. But the temptation to cheat to get ahead is great – and may work for the first takers. Ultimately, it makes everyone worse off as traffic becomes increasingly chaotic and dangerous. Breaking the cycle is tough, because following the rules means losing out, at least among early practitioners, so no one has the incentive to do so.

Enter CCTV. Supposedly, the traffic lights are equipped with cameras to help regulate traffic flow and catch red-light runners. Our concert companions were convinced that the cameras were indeed having a dissuasive effect, and prompting people to obey the signals.

I am fortunate that my usual driving patterns avoid the central and most traffic-ridden parts of the city. I go about most of my daily business along the outskirts of the worst of the traffic problems. Also, I rarely see a stop sign, much less a stoplight. The intersections I cross subscribe mostly to the rule that the biggest or most aggressive car goes first.

But this morning I had to navigate through some of the lights and circles of Nairobi’s busiest thoroughfare. And I was less convinced than our concert companions of the change in habits of my fellow drivers. Most plowed right through the red lights and ticking numbers, though did not actually rear end me when I stopped. One car to my left at the Westlands Circle not only drove through the red light, but actually grazed two pedestrians without so much as a pause.

Changing behaviors is hard, whether on the individual or societal level. And in countries where many people don’t feel well served by their laws, government, and political leaders it’s especially difficult to replace a sense of looking out for oneself with one of social duty and collective responsibility.

Will Nairobi drivers ever fold to the rules of the road and start to build a new dynamic of collaboration, where everyone is better off? 

Maybe.

The pace of change will likely be slow, but it’s possible that the force of small steps will eventually push through. 

Change has a way of doing that.

To quote Bill Waterson’s wonderful cartoon character Calvin:

“Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon...everything's different."  

Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes