Development and Its Discontent

April 12, 2013

By JULIA WALLACE

PHNOM PENH — In 2010, the Cambodian government unveiled with great fanfare the country’s first traffic overpass. The $6 million project — lit with a futuristic blue neon swoosh — was intended to ease congestion where a major boulevard that runs north-south through Phnom Penh intersects with twin bridges that cross the Bassac River, just to the east. Prime Minister Hun Sen called the Sky Bridge Project a “great achievement” and proclaimed that it would end traffic problems in the area.

"Traffic police are widely known for setting up checkpoints to extract bribes over trivial offenses, while largely ignoring dangerous driving."

It wasn’t long before commuters discovered a catch: By making it easier for motorists traveling north-south to keep going straight, the new overpass made it impossible for them to turn left onto the intersecting east-west road. The result is a mess. Now, drivers heading south who want to cross the river must first take a right and drive away for several hundred meters and then make a U-turn and head back. And motorists heading north are forced to turn right, which necessarily takes them onto the bridges — meaning that they are forced to cross the river, turn around and cross the river again. Congestion in the area is worse than ever, and the traffic more dangerous.

While Cambodia is finally reaping some of the benefits of economic growth — more people are buying cars, and more roads and bridges are being built — urban planning and law enforcement haven’t caught up to this reality. Neither has the ability of Cambodians to conceive of themselves as belonging to a larger system.

Traffic police are widely known for setting up checkpoints to extract bribes over trivial offenses, while largely ignoring dangerous driving. Just 6 percent of commercial trucks on the roads — often cast-offs from more developed countries that are jerry-rigged with random spare parts — would pass existing safety inspections if those were properly administered.

Many Cambodians, for their part, have been living for so long in a society where traffic laws (and all other laws) are enforced arbitrarily, that they have essentially given up thinking of these laws as designed to serve the greater good.

Some 70 percent of Cambodian drivers purchase their licenses. Many regard lane markers and traffic lights as mere suggestions. They drive drunk, they drive down sidewalks, they drive on the wrong side of the road. According to a study last year by Handicap International-Belgium, only 30 percent of Cambodian drivers even understand the concept of speed limits.

Traffic deaths have doubled since 2005. Nearly 2,000 Cambodians died on the roads last year, whereas land mines, still a favorite cause of NGOs and international donors, kill around 40 people per year. Traffic accidents are now the second-highest cause of death for the country’s 15 million people, after respiratory infections, according to the World Health Organization. And accidents cost the economy $310 million per year, the transportation minister said recently.

But Cambodians are starting to pay more attention to the mayhem on their roads. Early last month, the country’s most famous male vocalist, Khemarak Sereymon, was en route to a concert in the beach town of Sihanoukville when a container truck hit his car, killing two members of his entourage. Another two people died after a beer truck drove into the crash scene. Shortly after the accident, he released a song, set to a Leonard Cohen melody, pleading with drivers to be more careful. It was an immediate hit.

This came soon after another grisly accident, in Phnom Penh. While fleeing the scenes of two previous accidents she had just caused, a medical student in a Toyota Camry mowed down a group of young children bicycling home from school, killing three. The woman’s father, a local government official, defended her by saying that she was tired from excessive studying.

Vigils were held near the crash site where the children died, and a large procession of Buddhist monks, a hugely significant moral force in Cambodian public life, marched the length of the city to mourn them. Separately, a local grassroots movement has brought smaller groups of monks to bless stretches of dangerous road with holy water.

There may be more dousing ahead. In a bid to be released from jail, the hit-and-run driver has reportedly paid out more than $20,000 to the families of the three children she killed — a common, if illegal, practice that can lead prosecutors to drop criminal charges if they believe the compensation is adequate. Her lawyer argued that she should be freed because her crime was “not serious.”

Julia Wallace is managing editor of The Cambodia Daily.