PLEASE don’t get me wrong. I shall never ever make it as a minister or as the heading says, transport minister.
It’s just a way of saying what I would focus on if I were one.
For six months at the most I would devote, as regular readers of this column could by now sense, on bringing down the horrific death toll from motorcycle-related crashes in the country.
To begin with, I would initiate the process of enacting laws to create a new motorcycle riding culture by reducing the speed limit.
This will slowly but surely put an end to speeding, which is second nature to the vast majority of our motorcyclists and that is the main cause of why an average of over 4,000 people, mostly youths, are killed annually.
Studies by the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros) have shown that if the maximum speed for motorcycles is limited to 70-80km per hour, fatal crashes could be reduced by as much as 80%.
Just imagine how many lives could be saved by just this one piece of legislation and of course with strict enforcement and effective education.
Next would be to roll out the no-frills designated lanes for motorcyclists to ride without having to squeeze in and out of the fast lanes where the bigger vehicles are moving.
As the traffic police can vouch, many motorcyclists lost their lives in the fast lane.
Have you seen videos of motorcyclists getting thrown off their bikes and killed after being knocked down by cars just inches away?
The ones that I receive by WhatsApp are scarier than the video on how George Floyd died while being arrested. His death has led to street protests in the United States and other countries.
I say no-frills because I have the feeling that these lanes have still not been laid out in most parts of the country because it’s thought that they are expensive.
No, they are not. I would urge officials to visit some cities in China where motorcyclists don’t come into direct contact with cars or other bigger vehicles.
Metal railings or barricades are put up to separate the two-wheelers so they can ride safely without their loved ones having to worry if they would arrive safely at their workplaces or homes. As a huge number of them don’t in Malaysia.
Yes, it would take a couple of months to get such a legislation before it’s passed in Parliament but work on it must begin.
There are people who doubt whether this law against motorcycle speeding could be effectively enforced given the huge number of motorcycles in the country, reportedly at around 15 million and growing rapidly by the day.
I would argue otherwise. Bring in the law first and we’ll see what happens.
Taking the recently enforced law against smoking at restaurants as an example, I must say that you can hardly see people puffing away now after having their meals at these places as was common previously.
It will certainly take a lot of effort by schools, universities and parents to educate young motorcyclists to keep to safe speeds.
There are also many people who are sceptical about the effectiveness of special lanes if we have them one day as I daydream on the topic of “If I were transport minister”.
On this, let me share with readers what Miros chairman Datuk Suret Singh posted on Twitter recently.
“Did you know that the Kuala Lumpur-Klang exclusive motorcycle lane is utilised by 80% of kapcai (small engine motorcycle) riders with the highest death toll of two deaths a year and mostly zero deaths for the last 20 years.
“Conclusion – Segregating kapcai from mixed traffic reduces their deaths phenomenally,” said Suret.
This road safety activist, who was formerly director-general of Miros, told me that right now he is pushing through a proposal for such lanes to be implemented under the 12th Malaysia Plan that kicks in next year.
As the nation and the entire world are engrossed in battling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, we must spare no effort to curb our exponential death toll from road crashes or what we commonly term “accidents”.
Many more people have died on our roads during the past three months of the movement control order (MCO) than from the virus itself despite the fact that there has been much less traffic due to restrictions.
And as usual over 70% of the deaths involved motorcyclists and pillion riders as they are always the most vulnerable victims.
This prompted Director-General of Health Datuk Seri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, the most prominent of our frontliners battling the pandemic, to depart from his daily press conference on Wednesday of routinely giving facts and figures on casualties from Covid-19, to express concern about the sharp rise in road deaths during the various phases of the MCO that started on March 18.
Under the first phase until March 31, the road death toll was 58 and this rose to 68 during the second phase from May 5 to May 12.
From May 13 to June 9, the death toll spiked to 231, bringing the total to 507 deaths from March 18 to the last day of the conditional MCO just two days ago.
The Health Ministry is obviously concerned over the welfare of workers who have to travel to their workplace following the reopening of various economic sectors.
“With accidents, there will also be an increase in use of blood supply to treat these cases which normally see serious injuries that require blood transfusions,” said Noor Hisham.
Here we have to also take into account the number of those seriously injured who succumbed to injuries during treatment at a time when staff of all hospitals are up to their necks trying to save the lives of those infected with Covid-19.
And with the interstate travel ban being lifted from Wednesday and the “balik kampung” exodus this weekend by those taking advantage of what remains of the Hari Raya season, road safety is of the utmost concern.
My biggest “nightmare” that triggered me to coin the headline for this week’s column is over the safety of motorcyclists.
Chris Syer, the president of the Malaysian British Society and an Englishman who has been living in Malaysia as a permanent resident for 60 years, just cannot bear to see the unabated loss of lives among motorcyclists.
“These are meaningless, senseless and futile deaths. Most motorcyclists are speeding while riding. My advice is: Better late than dead on time,” he told me.
A group of 14 medical specialists and consultants recently took a rare move to jointly write a letter to a newspaper describing motorcyclist deaths as “totally preventable”.
If I were transport minister, my job would be done once the law on reduced speed limits for motorcycles and designated riding lanes are in place and I would happily quit the very next day.
Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
