IN another populist move, a whopping 70% discount is being offered to traffic offenders who have been slapped with summonses if they pay up from Aug 1 until the end of the month.
And to top it up, Transport Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong, who announced this very generous gesture the previous week, said the offer is made to mark Independence Day on Aug 31.
Indeed, it’s welcome news for those with stacks of unpaid summonses to their names or who habitually don’t pay at all but what kind of message is the minister and the agencies under his ministry sending in the realm of road safety?
As a road safety activist via this column, I say without any hesitation that this is a misplaced populist move and if we are serious about road safety, then we are sending all the wrong signals.
Granted that this is not something new and is done now and then but just because it is so does not mean that we have to continue doing it.
We need to revisit this practice if the Transport Ministry or agencies under it, especially the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros) and the Road Safety Department (JKJR), are serious about road safety by means of injecting a sense of discipline and compliance among road users
Do we want to create a society of road users who think nothing about breaking traffic laws in a nation which is already haunted by one of the highest rates of road crashes and fatalities in the world?
And did the transport minister ever consult Miros, JKJR as well as the key Road Transport Department (JPJ) when deciding to offer such huge margins of discount?
On this score, credit and even praise must be given to Wee’s predecessor, Anthony Loke, who kept his word that there would be no discount for traffic summonses as long as he was transport minister.
There was none in the 22 months of the previous government but things were reversed now.
It is this kind of seriousness and commitment for road safety that we need from any politician who holds this post.
There’s absolutely no logic whatsoever for people to play politics with road safety issues because road crashes have for a very long time time now been one of the major causes of deaths in the country, more than the death toll of many non-communicable diseases.
There’s also been deafening silence from NGOs concerned with road safety on the discount move and this does not augur well for whatever effort being made to instil greater awareness and consciousness to make our roads less “deadly”.
Giving a discount of as much as 70% is exactly like rewarding or giving a bonus to traffic offenders, who directly or indirectly are contributing to the already tens of thousands of crashes or commonly referred to as “accidents” on our roads and highways.
According to police records, in 2018 there were nearly 549,000 crashes resulting in 6,284 deaths. In addition, almost 3,000 suffered serious injuries and over 5,000 lighter injuries.
Our road carnage as a I call it in one of world’s most peaceful nations that Malaysia is, has truly been a massive drain on our human resource and certainly from the financial and social dimensions as well.
What is happening throughout this month are long queues of traffic offenders jamming the paying counters to settle their summonses taking advantage of the cheap offer.
And with the Covid-19 pandemic still raging in our midst, such long queues are another cause for headache especially – and rightfully so – to our hardest working civil servant, Director-General of Health Datuk Seri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, and his frontliners at hospitals across the nation.
It will be very tough and almost impossible for staff at the paying counters to enforce the mandatory social or physical distancing with such massive crowds.
I spoke to a former director-general of JKJR on this and he was livid against the perennial discount granted to traffic offenders.
“To me, the discount given is a negative move. Already all this while public perception on being a traffic offender is that it’s not something serious and the punitive measures taken are also slow in coming,” said Abdul Ghafar Yusof.
And this leads to public perception that they can ignore such summonses while waiting for the discount season to come.
“It’s also public perception that they can get away with committing traffic offences and they don’t have to pay until there’s a discount.
“The time has come for all concerned with our road traffic and safety to put phobia on road users from committing any kind of offences, otherwise they will not fear about breaking the law elsewhere, too,” said Ghafar.
Road safety activist Mohd Rawi Omar, a former permanent member of the Selangor Road Safety Council, said traffic summonses are a deterrent to the offenders not to repeat their irresponsible acts on the road that could cause so much misery.
“Secondly, we have to remember that a death on the road doesn’t come with any discount of 50%. It’s a 100% total loss.
“The impact of such a death goes well beyond monetary terms, it’s a loss of loved ones in families, friends as well as our skilled and professional workforce,” he said.
The loss of each life on the road is estimated at RM2.5 million and just muliply that to the 7,000-odd casualties annually.
The minister needs also to revisit the lax implementation of the so-called Kejara system, which is a demerit points formula whereby driving or riding licence holders get points deducted according to the offences they commit.
It’s an open secret that this system is not working well due to synchronisation issues with the enforcement agencies under the Automated Enforcement System (AES), which is yet another setback in road safety effort.
This is why sometimes we read in the media cases of express bus drivers involved in a crash that resulted in many deaths, for instance, still did not have his driving licence revoked.
Thumbs up to Wee for the seriousnss he places in getting the drink driving laws tabled in the ongoing Parliament meeting despite the low statistics on fatalities resulting from driving under the influence of alcohol compared with other causes
But by the same token, as frequently highligted via this column, the most critical road safety issue now or has been for a long time is the horrific death toll of motorcyclists.
To begin with, as recently proposed by prominent social activist Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, a special task force has to be set up to work on this.
I urge the minister to start working on this before thousands more motorcyclists lose their lives.
The very purposes of traffic summonses is Deterrence.
Do not self-defeat this objective by giving a discount.
Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
