Driving & Accident : Driver & Government

Salam,

It was approximately 9 years ago when I first got my driving licence..pass in my first attempt. Proud? Yup, at that time was really proud because I've heard many stories about people having to take and re-take their driving test several times and I was lucky to pass it at my very first attempt. Okay, I am not going to talk about my previous 'achievement' it was a history. enough.

In Daily Express (www.dailyexpress.com.my) 22/11/2009 Sunday it was reported that a young mum-to-be died in an accident on the way to deliver her very first baby at the Likas hospital. The accident was not caused by the driver of the car she was travelling in, but by another car from the opposite lane who carelessly lost control of his big 4WD car and ram to this ill-fated perodua kancil on which this mother to-be travelling in with her brother-driver, her sister in-law and her mother which are all seriously injured. As usual we can do lots of interpretation from this very sad and touching real life cases.

First, the government have done very well and I believe will continuously conducting safe driving campaign to educate and to remind road user-driver to be very carefull when driving not only for their own safety but for another road user too. There have been countless media advert about this, many approaches of the campaign have been utilise by the government but still the graph of road accident keep on increasing.

What went wrong here? Does the government did not do enough? Every festive season in Malaysia (aidilfitri, chinese new year, deepavali, christmas etc etc) the police traffic, the road and transport department staff will have to sacrifice their leave in order to make sure that the road users will follow the rules while on road. Does this sacrifices did not enough? Perhaps the government also need to pay attention to the following and stop wasting the tax payer money into launching useless road safety campaign;

i. Drivers who get their driving licence before the age of 30 should be retrain and re-test once every 3 or 5 years. For example, If I got my driving licence at the age of 20, in order for me to continue enjoying my driving privileges I would need to be re-test by the age of 23/25 and another re-test by the age of 30. After the driver reach the age of 30 then the interval of having to set for re-train/re-test could be aroung 7/10 years. Now you might think that this suggestion is unnecessary burden and unjustified. Wait. Most of us who have been driving for years tend to develop our own habit of driving, and in most cases these habits is the bad habits of driving. Human being human always tend to forget and need to be constantly reminded. If you dont believe in me, go and try it for yourself..take the driving test again and see what mark you'll get. I bet if you still remember your mark during your first driving test will be much better than your second test. I am saying this and believe in this concept of re-train and re-test because currently am being re-train in order for me to pass the driving test to get the UK driving licence. And, guess what in my very first driving lesson the instructor says that the way am driving is way below the standard mark of passing the driving test in UK and it is all because of my bad habit of driving. Now I am in my second lesson and it seems that it is a bit hard to get rid of these bad habit, hopefully will be able to get rid of them and pass my test.

ii. Apart from human factors another major cause for road accident is the technical aspect including the road worthiness of the car. I've come accross an accident where a big lorry ram into an incoming FWD, the driver and the passenger of the FWD died instantly while the lorry driver suffer minor bruises. The lorry driver says that he lost control of his vehicle because the hydraulic brake of his lorry did not work. am not saying that the UK has very good system in place but it is certainly proven that the annual testing of a vehicle roadworthiness for car that is more than three years old has play its part in reducing the number of road accident in UK cause by technical aspect. In Malaysia we do have this system - PUSPAKOM which if I am not mistaken make it compulsary for commercial vehicle to undergo this annual testing. However, it is an open secret that with certain amount of money you can get a PASS Certificate for your vehicle and to make it worst to the extent that they dont even physically checking your vehicle. So there you go.

iii. In the early years of car being invented (honestly I have no idea in what year motorised car being invented) the main purpose of the car those days was to transport people from point A to point B. The concept of safety car for passenger was not the priority. Nowadays car safety is a must. In certain developed country it is a must that every car must fulfill minimum requirement for safety. Back in Malaysia this safety requirement seems not in the priority of the government. If, the safety of people in car is the priority of the government and the government are seriously wanted to reduce the number of road accident casualty then why on earth perodua kancil with no airbags (airbags have been proven to be able to reduce degree of injury in car accident) allowed to be on our road? I remember buying my very first wira aeroback, the salesman asked me to choose between leather seat or driver airbag? and he try to persuade me to go for the leather seat rather than the airbag because the leather seat will add value to my car, and they you go..I choose leather seat.:P

iv. road design and road label/warning. I am not going to elaborate on this. Like the PUSPAKOM classic case, the road design and road label /warning is also an open secret of major contributing factors in road accident.

So, I need to stress again that I am a firm believer of the need for our driver to be re-train and re-test from time to time because human being human we tend to forget and over time develop bad habits in driving, not to mention our mentality of putting safety as a non-priority. Am also believe that the government still did not doing enough to reduce road accident and casualty which I will discuss further in my next post.