THE year was 1973. My parents and two brothers were travelling in one car, while I was travelling in another with my uncle’s family. We were making our way back to Kuala Lumpur from Kelantan.
It was at a bend in the road in Bentong, Pahang, that the accident happened. The rear-end of an empty trailer, speeding from the opposite direction, hit a lorry carrying timber, which was in front of my parents’ car. The trailer’s tyres came loose and spun to hit the front of my parents’ car. Had the force been harder, my parents’ car would have been hurled into the ravine on the left. I would have been an orphan at an early age. I was lucky. I could have lost my parents and two brothers in that accident. No one was hurt, but the car was totalled. But, there are others who are not as lucky as I was.
Road accidents have robbed parents of their children, husbands of their wives and vice versa, turned children into orphans and wiped out entire families.
One of the causes of these road accidents is non-observance of the speed limit, which leads to careless driving and tragedy not only for the drivers but also their passengers. Somehow, everyone wants to be a Formula One driver when they hit the highway.
And, we have to constantly be wary when on the road. But, no matter how careful we may be on the road, other drivers may not.
I recall a conversation with my office colleagues sometime in the late 1980s. We were talking about a colleague, a first-time driver who had met with an accident.
All along, he gave us the impression that he was a cautious driver until his close friend, also a new driving licence holder, revealed how he got into the accident.
“You know why he hit the lamp post?” the friend asked. “It’s because the lamp post cannot move. For as long as he has been driving, other motorists had been avoiding him.”
This also reminds me of a motoring assignment in 2004, where an official of an American car manufacturing company gave Malaysian drivers some advice before we went for the test drive.
“Do not drive the way you drive back home. Do not stop along the freeways. Do not stop anywhere to take pictures. Do not break speed limits.
“The roads are heavily patrolled. When cutting into a lane, do not suddenly slow down. You will get hit from the back.”
He had generally described how Malaysians drive on the road.
Transport Ministry figures showed that 7,152 people died in road accidents in Malaysia last year, registering an alarming jump from 6,706 deaths the year before. Going through newspaper reports on road accidents in the first three months of the year, I will not be surprised if this year’s figure will surpass that of 2016.
The Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research had, in its 2012 research paper, predicted that the number of fatalities will increase to 10,716 in 2020.
And, every time there is a major accident involving fatalities, we read about the authorities re-looking or reviewing standard operating procedures (SOPs), especially when the accidents involved express buses and/or lorries. We also hear of task forces being set up to investigate the causes of the accidents.
There is probably nothing wrong with the SOPs, only we have not emphasised strong enforcement of these SOPs to be adhered to.
Take a drive on the highway and you’ll find express buses zooming up or down with no heed to the speed limits. Oh, let’s not stop at the express buses alone. Beware of the lorries and tankers, too.
Besides speeding, some of the common deadly driving sins committed by Malaysian drivers are changing lanes without signalling, using mobile devices while driving and swerving dangerously in and out of traffic.
Could subjecting existing driving licence holders to a refresher course before they renew their licence make a difference?
I know some drivers who are like angels behind wheel during classes and onwards to take their tests. But once they are licensed to drive, they turn into drivers from hell.
It would also be timely for the authorities to do a mid-term review of the Road Safety Plan of Malaysia (RSPM) 2014-2020, taking into consideration the current situation.
The plan states “while the government is working tirelessly to reduce road crashes, injuries and fatalities, responsibility for the success of RSPM 2014-2020 also rests with the general public, in particular road users. Educating road users on the importance of voluntary compliance with road regulations will be a major challenge in RSPM 2014-2020.”
Studies have shown that road accidents were caused by the human factor, not vehicle or poor road conditions.
And, in the words of former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 2006, when addressing the Internal Security Ministry’s monthly assembly: “If a faulty car can be fixed, if a road in poor condition can be repaired, surely the bad attitude of drivers can be corrected.”
The writer is a United Nation’s Journalism fellow and Wolfson College Cambridge press fellow. She has 30 years of experience as a journalist, half of which with the Business Times.
