The Increasing Rate of Accidents in Malaysia – Should the Government Be Blamed?
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Road accident is Ў®a global tragedyЎЇ with ever-rising trend. Abdul Kareem (2003, p.31) has stated in his book that Ў®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