Motorcrash

On this sunny, pleasant Wednesday afternoon, as I sat at a sidewalk table eating a falafel sandwich at my favorite falafel place on Dizengoff Street, I witnessed -- or rather heard -- for the first time a traffic accident in Israel. I say "heard" because I was startled by a loud noise on the street, but my view was blocked by a bus and it took me a moment to realize what had happened. It didn't quite register until I saw one of the guys who works at the falafel place rush out into the street to assist the people who were hurt. I got up from my table to help too, and as the bus moved out of the way I saw a woman, a man, and a moped lying on the street. A crowd quickly gathered, some trying to help, some merely looking. Some policemen were on the scene right away, and an ambulance arrived soon afterwards. The woman managed to get up on her own after a while, and she seemed OK, but the man had to be placed on a stretcher and put in the ambulance. Through it all, I watched with concern, but not having any medical training and only a rudimentary grasp of Hebrew, I wasn't sure what to do. I don't even know what telephone number to call here in Israel in case of emergencies. At the same time, my feelings of frustration were mixed with admiration for the people who were trying to help, especially the guy from the falafel place who acted so quickly and decisively. It made me wonder whether he had seen accidents there before.

I've heard that Israel has a very high rate of traffic accidents, so upon reflection I was surprised I hadn't seen more accidents already. (I've noticed that people on mopeds seem to drive especially recklessly, zipping around traffic rather than waiting in it.) According to one commentator from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Israel's high rate of traffic accidents is the result of "1) its deficient road and street system; 2) the massive, even exponential, increase in the number of automobiles using those roads; 3) the inexperience and limited capability of so many of Israel's drivers, especially the newer ones." Interestingly, he explains that "the Zionist halutzim [pioneers - W.Y.] built their cities as if they were building shtetls [small villages where Jews lived in Eastern Europe - W.Y.], this well after the automobile was being mass-produced in the United States and anybody with a little foresight could see that it would be accessible to almost everyone in the world within the century. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 after Henry Ford had already begun to pay his workers enough money to buy the cars that he mass-produced. Yet the streets of Tel Aviv were not even designed for wagons but for donkeys and pedestrians." He adds that it was not until the 1980s, as Israel became more affluent, that most Israelis acquired private automobiles. Fordism, it seems, came late to Israel.

However, official statistics suggest that the rate of traffic accidents in Israel is not as high as I had assumed. Another commentator notes: "Contrary to popular thought (and in researching this, I found I was wrong as well), Israel has less traffic deaths than the US: a traffic accident death rate of 6 per 100,000 residents, while the US as 14.7 per 100,000 residents, making it more than twice as dangerous to travel by car in the US than in Israel. However, Israel almost catches up in the number of injuries (509 vs 626 per 100,000), and does exceed the US in accidents per distance driven (0.8 vs 0.4 per million km driven)." (The data on which these observations are based can be found here.)

All the same, I think I'll buckle up and avoid riding mopeds while I'm here in Israel.