Road safety campaigns fail to reduce road accidents

PUTRAJAYA: Road safety campaigns have failed to reduce the number of accidents in the country, said Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Abdul Aziz Kaprawi.
He said the Road Safety Plan 2014-2020 targeted a reduction of 50% in the number of deaths and serious injuries resulting from road accidents by 2020, but instead, the number of deaths increased each year.
As such, he said, all the relevant agencies and parties, including the Road Safety Department, Road Transport Department, and Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros) should look into a more holistic approach to tackle the problem.
"We should have a new focus (in the effort to reduce accident rates) because I see the data today increasing, that is why I say we have failed and we should admit this fact.
"Maybe we should look at the practice in other countries like Sweden where the accident rate is 10 times lower than ours," he told reporters after launching the National-Level World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims 2017, here. today.
Abdul Aziz said since 2003, the number of deaths resulting from road accidents in the country had never been less than 6,000 people a year, and last year, the figure exceeded 7,000.
He added that other than increasing use of public transportation, other ways of reducing road accidents could include tightening the conditions for vehicle ownership.
Each year, he said, 1.5 million new vehicles and more than 500,000 new drivers were registered in Malaysia.
"In Singapore, a person who wants to buy a personal vehicle must have a Certificate of Entitlement (COE). But in our country, a house can sometimes have up to six cars," he said.
Meanwhile, Road Safety Department director-general Datuk Rosli Isa said last year, 960,569 road accidents were recorded throughout the country, with 670,935 involving motorcycles. — Bernama