In the US, many of us were educated as children with the mantra of "We're Number One." But when you learn more about other countries, you see that they are often superior in various ways. It's time we start to better appreciate this. If you've traveled or lived outside the US, the WA Free Press invites you to contribute to this continuing feature of the paper.

Tax collection in india

Tax authorities in southern India have started to send teams of traditional drummers to drum outside the homes or shops of tax evaders until they pay up. Tax officials in Rajahmundry city recently told reporters they had recovered three-fourths of the US$1.2 million owed by people there, after sending drummers. The city hired ten drummers for this purpose. The sense of shame caused by the drumming was enough to make most people come out and pay.

A Rajahmundry administrative official said, "The drive has been such a great success that we have had several inquiries from other cities and towns about it."

The city's tax collection rate has hit an all-time high, with nearly 95 percent collected.

information forwarded by Marc Smason

'Naked Streets' in Holland

How would you react if you found yourself driving down a street with no signs or painted lines? Would you maintain your speed but panic as you swerved around pedestrians and bikers indiscriminately crossing the road or would you slow down and pay closer attention to the people around you? The urban planners who intend to strip Exhibition Road in London are banking on the latter based on similar road-stripping experiments conducted in cities in Holland and Denmark. "The lack of signage, curbs and signals actually encourages drivers to self-regulate their actions and be more cautious," says Ben Hamilton-Baillie, an urban design specialist quoted recently in an article from Cox News Service. Statistics from urban planners in Wiltshire confirm Hamilton-Baillie's assertions. Speeds dropped five percent and accident rates dropped 35 percent after removing the center white line on several roads.

At first glance, the whole idea of increasing driver responsibility by removing all road signs seems counter-intuitive until you observe driver behavior in shared spaces with pedestrians. In a crosswalk on First and Jackson, for example, I saw a police officer strike a pedestrian (who had the right of way) with his squad car because the officer's attention was directed exclusively toward street signs and other cars instead of the people passing directly in front of his vehicle.

Transportation Research Laboratory researcher Mike Winnett, also quoted in the Cox News Service article, believes in the "naked street" solution but concedes that more research is necessary. "The Dutch have claimed for quite a while that you can get improvements in traffic flow and safety when you create a space in which the vehicle no longer has ownership. But we don't know whether there are cultural issues involved with their success."

Winnett's observation opens up a series of questions whose honest answers may mean the naked streets proposal is not an effective solution to the traffic safety and congestion problems in every other country. What cultural issues contribute to the project's success? Do people drive the same way in every country? Or do they adopt certain habits based on the realities--size of population, congestion, behavior of other drivers--of the road? If so, would it take more than a removal of signage to change their behavior? Until the project is expanded to a wide range of countries with different cultures and driving habits, the verdict is still out.

by Joel Hanson