This is the message of an old campaign for the #securityRoadway in #UK. It sounds ridiculous, if only the same message (maybe a bit watered down), was not used for road safety campaigns nowadays.
Pure victim blaming
crossposted from: https://poliversity.it/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/115705207235775690
I don’t think this is victim blaming, it’s just teaching kids to be safe. If a kid steps into a road and gets hit by a car it doesn’t matter whose fault it is, the kid ain’t coming back to life.
Yes, because you accept that roads are dangerous because of cars.
But who is giving this warning? The same institution that allowed the roads to become unsafe in the first place, and should protect vulnerable users instead of blaming them. This makes it victim blaming.
Road is public space and it doesn’t make sense that so much of it is unsafe for people not in a metal cage. Do you see which community we are in, by the way?
Man, two things can be true at once. Car culture is a toxic blight on humanity, and also we don’t want dead kids. You can navigate reality without “accepting” (meaning approving of) it.
Ok, but the main point is in the second sentence. I mean: the advice to not run down the kerb is something I say to my daughter, and i think it’s fine. The problem is where this comes from, the government who is shaking off responsibility for road safety by blaming vulnerable victims instead of working on the cause of danger (spoiler: cars, speed, drivers)
I think the problem is that things like this are the only thing government typically does. Not that they do it at all.
https://www.lifeaftercars.com/
I recommend you give this book a read, it goes into detail as to how this most certainly is victim blaming.
Edit:
I just remembered a thing I saw to help visualise how much of our public space has been dedicated to death. It was created for a Swedish speed reduction campaign
Kinda like “the morgue is full of people who had the right-of-way”