Refer to people's opinions before running yellow lights

While making a regulation pertinent to the public, authorities have the obligation to invite people's representatives to participate in the discussion and seek suggestions from the people, says an article of the Beijing Youth Daily. Excerpts:

The new traffic rule implemented in China making it illegal to run yellow lights has caught much more attention than its predecessors combined, because it almost makes a yellow light no different from a red.

The Public Security Ministry, the traffic regulator, appeared very tough toward drivers' discontent and questioning at first. After one week of implementation, the authority also found it hard to put the new rule into practice because it is very difficult to stop in time before the lights turn from green to yellow, as they are not equipped with countdown indicators. Some rear-end collisions have happened in the past few days because cars hit the brakes hard to avoid the yellow lights.

The ministry finally yielded to public pressure, admitting the rule will be suspended temporarily. Now most drivers can ignore the new rule on yellow lights as if the past farce never happened.

The authority should draw lessons from this self-inflicted farce. After several days of discussion, we find drivers are fully aware of the necessity of respecting yellow lights. The public security authority just needs to find the best way to transform the respect into practical rules, which are helpful to avoid accidents without affecting traffic efficiency. Yet, such an unthoughtful traffic rule hits drivers unprepared and will necessarily be resisted. Such a short-lived rule only harms the authority's credibility.

The Internet makes it much easier for authorities to know how people feel about public policies and can also serve as a platform to collect public opinion before making new rules. A click of the mouse saves a lot of trouble.