On 26th May 2020, PAS Information Chief, Kamaruzaman Mohamad, stated
“Looking at the frequent accident cases involving drunk drivers, PAS hereby suggests to the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin to immediately suspend all productions, businesses, and sales of liquor until new measures can be taken,” Kamaruzaman Mohamad told a press briefing yesterday. He also urged authorities, including the customs department, to revoke alcohol sale licenses for 24-hour convenience stores.
“The tragedy of drunk drivers should not be viewed lightly. The mistake was due to the weakness of existing law and enforcement as well as the selfishness and stubbornness of the drunkards,” (Coconuts KL)
This statement came about in light of spate of accidents caused by drunk driving. While it is imperative drunk driving needs to be penalised proportionally to the damage it cause, the statement misses the big elephant in the Malaysian Road Accident Scene
Malaysia has the third highest death rate on roads in the World, beating China and India (Link). The rate is so bad that it is as though our country is on par with lower income countries. This problem has been going for years and when we dissect the issues closely, we start realising the biggest problem of road accidents in Malaysia is caused attitudes of Malaysian drivers. Yes, the big elephant is the Malayisan driver and this has become a generational problem. How father or mother drives eventually results their children to inherit those attitudes. Moreover, we have third highest ownership of car rates in the world. Bring the attitude and car count together, we had a disaster rolling over the years
I downloaded the open data on road accidents in Malaysia and sources of those accidents. Top causes of accidents were (for January – September 2019)
(1) The vehicle got strayed off or went off the road
(2) Cutting into a road (but not overtaking two or more vehicles)
(3) Changing Lane
(4) Accidents at entering or exiting the corners or slip roads
(5) Following another vehicle too closely
Being under the influence of drinking is pretty negligible cause of the accidents.
I decided to check another information as I wasn’t fully convinced by the story of first dataset. According to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Drunk Driving Accident that caused deaths have plummeted drastically from 2016 to 2018 (Link). While this is not an excuse any deaths caused by drunk driving, clearly there are other bigger issues that are causing road deaths.
According to MIROS study of 2011, 80% of the road accidents are caused by carelessness of the drivers. This seems to match up with the data of 2019 that I initially referred to. RM 8.17 billion is lost due to road accident deaths in 2018 (which is a gradual reduction since 2016) but severe injuries caused by road accidents has created losses of RM 636 million (an upward increase from 2017). These statistics are coming are from Jabatan Keselamatan Jalan Raya (JKJR) – can be accessed here
So, these information sets seems to point to an ugly truth that all Malaysians needs to own up – our attitude (being under influence of alcohol is one of the minor attitudes to be tackled). No matter how much education or safety campaigns the government can put up over the years, the problem will not solve. No amount of tight enforcement or suspension of alcohol sales will reduce substantially the accidents. Every road accident causes trauma, financial losses, loss of life and waste of time for everyone. The problem will not go away as the attitude of Malaysian drivers are being passed from generation to generation
If you have car, think twice of need to drive unless you absolutely need to. Support your taxi or equivalent car sharing industries. If you have a car, keep it in the garage and have it maintained as per the manual. Use bus or any forms of public transport to move around. An exemption can be applied for rural setting
If you have problem in driving a car, driving in your local area when you need to. Then, reduce the need to drive outside the local. Learn to live with the inconveniences of travel through other means. There are workaround, safe for sure
Solution to Malaysian road accidents is not tougher laws (though needed for the interim) but having lesser vehicles on the street. We have too many cars and bad attitude to drive. Let’s take ourselves out of the road scene where we could.
Left Perspectives 