During the recent Chinese New Year (CNY) festive season holiday, as Malaysian do, I join the “balik kampung” crowd and driving back to North. As expected, the traffic was congested. The journey was disrupted few times due to road accidents.

I witnessed few cars crashed badly, overturned lorries and skidded cars which eventually created a massive traffic jam. For this to occur in highways is extraordinary absurd as most accidents occurs on federal rural roads, (highways are the safest in relation to distance travelled). Thus, I may add; the road is safe, but the attitude is in question!

I would like to ask the readers on the caption below whether this statement is adequate in ensuring that we can expect to see a drop cases in road accident in Malaysia.

“Police advise all road users to always comply with traffic regulations and follow instructions from enforcement officers on duty, especially during festive seasons. Additionally, all road users are urged to prioritise their safety and the safety of their loved ones while on the road.”

My immediate response is it may just be good enough as generally; Malaysians we tend to follow traffic laws quite well! However, Malaysian have no respect for their fellow citizens when it comes traffic rules. Over speeding a bit is common. However, traffic lights as well as wearing seat belt may become an issue to comply.

As responsible citizens, we can make the roads safer for all by simply following some basic rules. Attitude of drivers need to change.

My bad experience
I have experienced bullies, getting super close to my car by coming over the lane line or riding my tail, speeding and angry drivers.

They just wanna go faster than everybody else no matter what. This impatient driver is willing to break the rules just to get a little ahead. Why this guys like this and why are you guys in a hurry at all the time to get somewhere. Their journey is more important, their time is more precious, everyone else on the road are just trying to slow them down.

These types of drivers are selfish and self-centred, and this type of violation is a risk not only for the driver, but also to other road user and pedestrians. This all is very frustrating for people trying to follow rules, because not many really do.

The role of the government
My hats off to our government as they have taken various measures and initiatives either in the traffic enforcement and by implementing upgrades to existing roads and designing new ones.

The police have initiated various road safety campaign such as Ops Selamat (formerly Ops Sikap) to ensure safety on all roads in Malaysia during festive seasons such as Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Year, Deepavali, and Christmas Day.

According to the news, Ops Selamat has been deemed a success over this year’s Chinese New Year period as the authorities saw a drop in road accidents (a lagging indicator) compared to the years before.

Subsequently the traffic summonses (a leading indicator) also decrease. As usual, the main offence is speeding. In my opinion, the traffic police should not conduct speed trap at location where it is convenience for them to locate the team.

They should be stationed at location where there were many accidents happened based on historical data/ statistic.

Statistics can be a good indicator and statistics tell us somethings. In the case of road accident, sometimes, it makes me think if our government or Minister of Transport have digested and diagnosed the collected data i.e If the fatality rate of 1000 dropped to 600 in one year, does that mean that we are x percent better?

There should be few questions been asked ie what is it that we did to get better?

Moreover, injury statistics/fatality are lagging measures. I wish to suggest that we focus on the leading measures that will tell us whether or not our system is getting any better as we go.

Probable solutions
The likelihood of road accidents depends on several factors, which can be categorised into human factors, environmental and vehicles related factors. Based on the studies, the contributing factors to road accidents show that human factors predominate, roadway factors are the second most common category, with vehicle factors last.

In providing my opinion, allow me to sight on the theory derived from W. H. Heinrich”s Industrial Accident Prevention, which I applied during my working days in the oil and gas industry. The biggest reason for any accident is the human behaviour/dangerous reaction (unsafe act).

This supported by Heinrich said unsafe acts account for 88 percent of accidents, while unsafe conditions (malfunction and environmental) account for 10 %. Hence, I would say that we need to understand better with regards to human behaviour in making our road users are safer.

Law enforcement or punishment can be effective by making drivers think twice ie about speeding. However, receiving a punishment does not necessarily prevent a driver from repeat offences after the initial consequences have disappeared. Punishment may bring short-term benefits but does not address underlying issues.

We must face the facts that changing any of our behaviours is a challenge, and changing our behaviours as road users is particularly harder. Most of the training we go through as drivers is understandably focused on the skills need to control a vehicle rather than the attitude we bring to the task.

Hence, a system is needed to measure safety actions and reward structures are needed to demonstrate that road safety performance is valued as highly as other areas.

Lastly, the input covers mostly the behaviour parts in reducing road accidents. We need to note that reducing road accidents requires a combination of safe driving habits, proper vehicle maintenance, road improvements and strict enforcement of traffic laws.

There is still a big question on how we can foster rationality, patience and respect for the rules of the road and the rights of others!