If we’ll be careful on the roads, we’ll get accustomed to more calm and carefulness in anything that we do.
A Samaria rabbi promoted road safety as young volunteers distributed road safety information packages to drivers at each town of the Samaria Regional Council as part of the National Day of Road Safety and War on Traffic Accidents on Monday.
Throughout the schools and towns of Samaria, numerous activities are being held during December to bring more awareness to the issue of road safety. Samaria Fire department chief Avner Mosofi is touring the towns with a PowerPoint presentation, showing pictures of local events that emergency teams have dealt with, while schools are selling bicycle helmets at a subsidy by the National Authority for Road Safety.
“Learning Torah causes one to be careful,” stated the Sage, Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair, over 2,000 years ago. The sage advice is indeed timeless. According to Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, community rabbi of the Samaria community of Elon Moreh, being careful on the road touches on a person’s responsibility with G-d, with others, and with oneself.
“It is a Divine obligation to be careful, which is one of the Torah’s commandments,” Rabbi Levanon wrote in a pamphlet distributed by the Samaria Regional Council, promoting road safety.
Is there a connection between how one drives and how one conducts oneself in other areas of life? According to Rabbi Levanon, “If we’ll be careful on the roads, we’ll get accustomed to more calm and carefulness in anything that we do: Being more careful in regards to our friends, being more careful in family relationships, and most importantly – we’ll attain for ourselves this precious characteristic [of being careful] that will accompany us throughout our lives.”
According to the World Health Organization, 1 million people annually are killed in road accidents throughout the world. Since the creation of the State of Israel, over 30,000 citizens have been killed in road accidents. Over 400 were killed in road accidents, while 36,684 were injured in 2003.