Malaysia stands to save billions of ringgit from its diesel rationalisation exercise.
Of course, the money saved can be channelled to fund hospitals and schools. However, there are those who would argue that improving road safety and reducing traffic fatalities should be prioritised because most of the subsidy savings derive from land transport.
The majority of the over-7,000 road death victims annually are youths and adults in the prime of their working lives. Then there are also passengers and pillion riders who have suffered permanent disabilities.
Based on 2019 data, Malaysia’s relatively high rate of 7,181 road deaths, at 0.022% of the 32 million population, is shared by Thailand’s 22,428 road deaths, or 0.0203% of the kingdom’s 110 million people. Both these nations’ road death ratios are about twice Indonesia’s 30,668 deaths or 0.0113% of its 270 million population.
The UK is the model to aspire to in road safety, with 3,752 deaths or 0.0056% of its 67 million population. That’s about four times safer than Malaysia.
Though statistics can tell many stories depending on what denominators are plugged in – for instance, deaths per number of cars, or deaths per million kilometres – the overarching narrative is that there is plenty of room for improvement in traffic safety here.
The general consensus of the road and traffic safety community is that while there are a few pillars towards better road safety, enforcement of road traffic and transport laws is key.
So, let me tell you a unique story of enforcement of road transport law in Malaysia.
I also write this in memory of the three passengers and their driver who died when the car they were in slammed into the rear of a stalled trailer on the Yong Peng section of the North-South Highway on June 11.
This crash has many elements regarding the extra danger of driving at night or in low visibility conditions. In a decades-old response to this, the road transport department (JPJ) had ruled that commercial vehicles above 3.5 tonnes must display reflective stickers on the rear of their vehicles.
Sirim, in turn, approved a set of standards to define reflectivity, including an effective reflecting range of 400m in the humid Malaysian tropical night. Subsequently, the Malaysian distributors of reflective stickers ramped up their imports from their multinational principals to supply the transport industry.
This significant improvement in night driving safety was achieved in just a few years and was a seamless transition for the transport industry because European and US reflective stickers were imported and distributed in Malaysia.
However, the high-quality reflective stickers and their price of about RM70 for a pair attracted imports of less than half the price with counterfeit brands and Malaysia Standards approved chops.
The counterfeits lose their reflectivity within two years, while the branded ones are said to be good for at least five years.
There’s no enforcement of this reflectivity law because it was gazetted after the government’s privatisation of half-yearly commercial vehicle road-worthiness inspections to Puspakom in 1994. The concession agreement did not include the time to perform rear reflectivity inspections, and its inclusion later was a mere visual inspection rather than a reflectivity test.
When it became known to lorry drivers that the cheap yellow and orange stickers, especially the counterfeit ones, could pass off as Sirim-approved items, their imports soared.
In terms of enforcement, the JPJ teams carry out their duties mostly during the day when it is the hardest to check reflectivity. From my observation of night-time driving, the Grab riders’ box has a reflective tape that is far more effective than the ones used by most of the small commercial vehicles and many of the large heavy commercial trucks.
As for the police, investigations of fatal road crashes are not focusing on what caused them and how they happened. Their mandate now is not how to prevent an occurrence.
During investigations involving fatalities, the police will refer to other agencies such as the chemistry department, Puspakom, and the Land Public Transport Agency (Apad) for their reports on certain areas that are not within the force’s expertise or jurisdiction.
The involvement of multiple agencies leads to challenges in coordination and efficiency. When several agencies are involved, there is a risk of overlapping responsibilities, communication issues, delays in decision-making, and differing approaches to handling investigations. The result is that the data of Malaysian traffic fatalities collected by the police has a blind side to traffic fatality prevention.
To address this, it is crucial for the government to coordinate these agencies and establish clear protocols, streamline coordination efforts, and ensure effective communication mechanisms to avoid redundancy and ensure a smooth and efficient investigation process.
And, for a while, we thought that the Malaysia Institute for Road Safety Research or Miros could be evolved to this kind of agency with an overarching theme for promoting road safety as well as conducting crash-testing of cars to get safety stars under the Asean New Car Assessment Program (Asean NCAP).
As it turned out, budget cuts have got in the way and the goalposts have shifted. What was supposed to have been a Miros programme in Peninsular Malaysia for a team to investigate road traffic mishaps involving one or more fatalities has changed — there needs to be more than three fatalities to qualify for a Miros safety-inspired investigation.
And, even then, a Miros official who did not wish to be identified said the recent Johor crash that killed four did not qualify for an investigation because the fourth victim did not die at the scene, but only while receiving treatment in hospital.
While the dead tell no tales, a study of the crash scenario by experienced investigators can lead to accident prevention. So, it’s good if the transport ministry can increase the budget for empirical studies on road traffic fatalities, especially when it can reduce preventable road deaths.
One takeaway from this episode is that Miros can buy approved handheld reflectivity gauges and lease them to all the Puspakom inspection centres.
This will almost immediately restore compliance with laws promoting road and traffic safety during night and low-visibility conditions.
Yamin Vong can be reached at his Facebook page, yamin.com.my.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
