The Increasing Rate Of Accidents In Malaysia: Should The Government Be Blamed?

Road accident is ÐŽ®a global tragedyЎЇ with ever-rising trend. Abdul Kareem (2003, p.31) has stated in his book that ÐŽ®1.17 million deaths occur each year worldwide due to road accidents 70% of which occur in developing countries. 65% of deaths involve pedestrians, 35% of which are childrenЎЇ. In Malaysia, road accidents represent a major public health problem, because of the high number of victims involved and because of the seriousness of the consequences for themselves and for their families. Based on the Ops Sikap statistics, for year 2005, the total numbers of accidents have a huge amount of 328,264. But then, 13,513 accidents were reported between Jan 23 and Feb 6 in year 2006, which was a 14.8% increase compared with the corresponding period for year 2005, thus we can know that accidents rate in Malaysia is actually increasing with a scary speed (Chua, 2006). Although road accidents in Malaysia have escalated in the past few years, it is still unsure as to who is to be blamed for this increasing rate of accidents. When the accident rate is increasing, many people tend to blame the government, but actually, beside government, there are also other factors that partly responsible for the increasing rate of accidents in Malaysia.

The purpose of the essay is to explore which parties are equally responsible for the increasing rate of accidents. Although government have its responsible on this issues, some private sectors, driver behavior and parents are also responsible as these parties also contributes to the increasing accidents rate.

Private sectors

In Malaysia, our highways are well-known for its low quality of highways surface and also its confusing identification signs. The uneven highways surface, potholes and the inaccuracy sign board that is unable to give people without a detailed map to travel from one place to another always causes accidents in highways. More than that, the highways maintenance is also very less efficient. Sometimes, it just take so long time for the highways company to repair those uneven road or broken sign board. Thus, many people have blamed the government for this matter as these factors had really causes a great increase of accidents in highways. But actually, most of the people do not know that in our country, highways are not belongs to government, but they are run by private companyЎЄPLUS Company. Therefore, it is not only the government should be responsible for the increasing rate of accidents in highways, but private sector such as PLUS Company should also have the responsible on this. According to the Smart Motorist (n.d.), a highway is design by engineers with special consideration given to the highway surfaces, traffic control device, behavioral control devices, and highway identification signs. The PLUS Company should make attempt to be stricter towards the design of safe highways layouts and traffic management system and also improve their maintenance service and also

Subsequently, in Malaysia, manufacturers are required by law to design and engineer cars that meet a minimum safety standard. Thus most of the vehicles produced are easy and safe to drive. But not everything is perfect, sometimes, there are also some equipment failure happens to be. The most cited types of equipment failure are loss of brakes, tire blowouts or tread separation, and steering/suspension failure (Smart Motorist, n.d.). According to Lenny (2006), one of the reporter for an online press, the Transport Minister-DatoЎЇ Seri Chan Kong Choy has said that faulty vehicles such as vehicles which were improperly maintained or have equipment failure were the main causes of fatal accidents in Malaysia. I believe that every driver should have faced some equipment failure situations before as I myself have already tried two out of these four types of common equipment failure. These equipment failures has nothing to do with the government as it is our responsibility to make sure our vehicle is in the suitable condition before we drive. Maybe some of the people will think is not their fault because they have send their vehicle for maintenance every year, but they still faced equipment failure. Well actually, this might be the car service center fault as sometimes there are shops that only pay full attention on money but not their services. People cannot blame the government for this if they faced accidents caused by equipment failure as the government is innocent in this case.

Driver behavior

Apart from the private sector, driver behavior is also a main cause of accidents. Director Prof Dr Radin Umar Radin Sohadi comment that most accidents occurred due to selfish and inconsiderate attitude, the reckless driving, indiscriminate lane switching, inability to overtake in time and dangerous overtaking (Chua, 2006). Driver nowadays seems to have very inconsiderate attitude compared with last time. Some drivers will impaired driving such as racing in the road, and due to their inconsiderate attitude, they do not care as long as they reach their destination in the shortest time. More than that, some drivers also tend to take chances to make unsafe lane changes frequently. They do not care where they are, how their action will effected other drivers, they just change their lane dangerously and unexpectedly without considerate the consequence. Moreover, there are even a small group of drivers that have deliberate obstruction, which prevent other drivers to move their vehicles. They parked in places that blocked other vehicles to move. The common places are double line, yellow box and middle of the road. From this we can know that, most of the Malaysia drivers are really aggressive and have very rude attitude. Their selfishness and inconsiderate attitude have contributed greatly to the increasing rate of accidents in Malaysia.

Besides having inconsiderate attitude, reckless and careless drivers also cause accidents rate to increase from year to year. The most common dangerous act that drivers will do is excessive speeding. Some drivers will drive really fast as if the road is their racing track. Especially when there is a so-called emergency, drivers can even speed up until 110kph on federal and state roads, and they seem to be never bother about the speed limit (Karim, 2006). They tent to speed up when there is an emergency because most of the Malaysian drivers did not adopt the ÐŽobetter late than neverÐŽ± attitude. Drivers should drive slow as slower speed helps drivers have better control of their vehicles. The other causes that contribute to the accidents rate are drunk driving and inadequate sleep. According to a case-control study of 571 drivers involved in road accidents, it was found that driving when not enough sleep