Malaysia stands to save billions of ringgit from its diesel rationalisation train.
Of course, the cash saved might be channelled to fund hospitals and faculties. However, there are those that would argue that bettering road safety and decreasing visitors fatalities needs to be prioritised as a result of many of the subsidy savings derive from land transport.
The majority of the over-7,000 road dying victims yearly are youths and adults within the prime of their working lives. Then there are additionally passengers and pillion riders who’ve suffered everlasting disabilities.
Based on 2019 information, Malaysia’s comparatively excessive price of seven,181 road deaths, at 0.022% of the 32 million inhabitants, is shared by Thailand’s 22,428 road deaths, or 0.0203% of the dominion’s 110 million folks. Both these nations’ road dying ratios are about twice Indonesia’s 30,668 deaths or 0.0113% of its 270 million inhabitants.
The UK is the mannequin to aspire to in road safety, with 3,752 deaths or 0.0056% of its 67 million inhabitants. That’s about 4 instances safer than Malaysia.
Though statistics can inform many tales relying on what denominators are plugged in – as an example, deaths per variety of automobiles, or deaths per million kilometres – the overarching narrative is that there’s loads of room for enchancment in visitors safety right here.
The normal consensus of the road and visitors safety neighborhood is that whereas there are a number of pillars in direction of higher road safety, enforcement of road visitors and transport legal guidelines is essential.
So, let me let you know a novel story of enforcement of road transport legislation in Malaysia.
I additionally write this in reminiscence of the three passengers and their driver who died when the automotive they have been in slammed into the rear of a stalled trailer on the Yong Peng part of the North-South Highway on June 11.
This crash has many parts concerning the additional hazard of driving at evening or in low visibility situations. In a decades-old response to this, the road transport division (JPJ) had dominated that business automobiles above 3.5 tonnes should show reflective stickers on the rear of their automobiles.
Sirim, in flip, permitted a set of requirements to outline reflectivity, together with an efficient reflecting vary of 400m within the humid Malaysian tropical evening. Subsequently, the Malaysian distributors of reflective stickers ramped up their imports from their multinational principals to provide the transport business.
This important enchancment in evening driving safety was achieved in just some years and was a seamless transition for the transport business as a result of European and US reflective stickers have been imported and distributed in Malaysia.
However, the high-quality reflective stickers and their worth of about RM70 for a pair attracted imports of lower than half the worth with counterfeit manufacturers and Malaysia Standards permitted chops.
The counterfeits lose their reflectivity inside two years, whereas the branded ones are mentioned to be good for at the very least 5 years.
There’s no enforcement of this reflectivity legislation as a result of it was gazetted after the federal government’s privatisation of half-yearly business automobile road-worthiness inspections to Puspakom in 1994. The concession settlement didn’t embody the time to carry out rear reflectivity inspections, and its inclusion later was a mere visible inspection relatively than a reflectivity take a look at.
When it turned identified to lorry drivers that a budget yellow and orange stickers, particularly the counterfeit ones, might move off as Sirim-approved objects, their imports soared.
In phrases of enforcement, the JPJ groups perform their duties principally in the course of the day when it’s the hardest to verify reflectivity. From my remark of night-time driving, the Grab riders’ field has a reflective tape that’s far simpler than those utilized by many of the small business automobiles and most of the giant heavy business vehicles.
As for the police, investigations of deadly road crashes usually are not specializing in what brought on them and the way they occurred. Their mandate now will not be how to forestall an prevalence.
During investigations involving fatalities, the police will refer to different companies such because the chemistry division, Puspakom, and the Land Public Transport Agency (Apad) for his or her reviews on sure areas that aren’t throughout the pressure’s experience or jurisdiction.
The involvement of a number of companies leads to challenges in coordination and effectivity. When a number of companies are concerned, there’s a threat of overlapping obligations, communication points, delays in decision-making, and differing approaches to dealing with investigations. The result’s that the information of Malaysian visitors fatalities collected by the police has a blind aspect to visitors fatality prevention.
To tackle this, it’s essential for the federal government to coordinate these companies and set up clear protocols, streamline coordination efforts, and guarantee efficient communication mechanisms to keep away from redundancy and guarantee a easy and environment friendly investigation course of.
And, for some time, we thought that the Malaysia Institute for Road Safety Research or Miros might be developed to this type of company with an overarching theme for selling road safety in addition to conducting crash-testing of automobiles to get safety stars below the Asean New Car Assessment Program (Asean NCAP).
As it turned out, price range cuts have gotten in the best way and the goalposts have shifted. What was supposed to have been a Miros programme in Peninsular Malaysia for a crew to examine road visitors mishaps involving a number of fatalities has modified — there wants to be greater than three fatalities to qualify for a Miros safety-inspired investigation.
And, even then, a Miros official who didn’t want to be recognized mentioned the current Johor crash that killed 4 didn’t qualify for an investigation as a result of the fourth sufferer didn’t die on the scene, however solely whereas receiving remedy in hospital.
While the useless inform no tales, a research of the crash situation by skilled investigators can lead to accident prevention. So, it’s good if the transport ministry can enhance the price range for empirical research on road visitors fatalities, particularly when it might scale back preventable road deaths.
One takeaway from this episode is that Miros should purchase permitted handheld reflectivity gauges and lease them to all of the Puspakom inspection centres.
This will nearly instantly restore compliance with legal guidelines selling road and visitors safety throughout evening and low-visibility situations.
Yamin Vong might be reached at his Facebook web page, yamin.com.my.
The views expressed are these of the author and don’t essentially replicate these of eNM.
