KZBlog

Missed this cute little story: On Valentine’s Day, policewomen handed out flowers and cards instead of tickets [RU] to traffic law violators in Kostanai province. On the back of the Valentine’s Day cards were explainations of the traffic laws.

The head of the traffic police section in Kostanai was quoted by zakon.kz as saying, “Today, in honor of the holiday, we warn people that the violation of traffic laws brings grave consequences…Through [today’s] actions, we want to attract drivers’ attention to road safety and respectful and lawful behavior on the roads.” translation mine

It’s a cute idea. And not ineffective I suspect because 1) many people don’t seem to actually know the rules of the road or forget them after time and 2) people are so terrified of seeing traffic police that they are often aggressive with them, in turn making traffic police aggressive and nasty. Maybe we can move to more cordial relationships between drivers and police and make getting pulled over a tolerable, if never pleasant, experience.