The opposition members of parliament should take the opportunity to table a motion to sack the transportation minister during the current Parliament sitting for failure to ensure the safety of road users in Malaysia. This is despite the presence of two dedicated agencies under the ministry which look into the safety of road users, namely the Department of Road Safety (JKJR) and the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros).

The list of the ministry’s incompetency is just too much and too long to ignore. Take the 2015 report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for a start. The WHO indicated that up to last year (and still true till today), the national child restraint law remains absent despite the matter being documented in the 2009 and 2013 reports. This suggests that there is no political will by the ministry to ensure the safety of road users in Malaysia.

It was reported in the media that the ministry’s senior official said that the child restraint law will be introduced in 2017 , but the proposal was later shifted to 2019.

The bigger question is, why wait till 2019? Is it because the general election is expected to take place in 2018? Isn’t it clear that proposal to make the usage of child seat compulsory is also politically driven, which is for the political survival of the minister himself, as the compulsory use of child restraint would not come without objection from the public.

In other words, is Liow Tiong Lai’s own political survival more important than the lives of millions of children on the road?

The ministry has always been hiding behind the need to ‘educate’ the roads users before making the law compulsory, and often citing the issue of affordability, or the need to do the study. In reality, to date, the education on child seat usage doesn’t seem to be reaching the audience, and affordability isn’t an issue.

As we can see on the roads, most parents can afford expensive cars, but why can’t they buy the RM300 child seat? Yes, there are child seat which are selling even below RM300 in hypermarkets around the country.

Former attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail in May this year suggested that child seat usage should be made mandatory regardless of the awareness. Due to extent of the danger, Gani also suggested that parents who refused to restraint their children should face criminal laws.

It has been reported in The Sun daily that WHO also raised its concern over the low percentage of seat belt usage in Malaysia. Although the responsibility of carrying the out the enforcement lies under the jurisdiction of the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM); and again, the duty of effective awareness campaign on seatbelt safety falls under the JKJR.

The WHO report also indicates the stagnant trend on death per 100,000 population since past decade, which shows no significant reduction in the index. Currently 23 out of 100,000 Malaysia are killed on the road for every year, compared to only three in Sweden, UK and Netherlands. On average, 19 people are killed daily, and 10 of them are motorcyclists. Isn’t it obvious that our roads are not safe?

The Transport Ministry also blatantly failed to adopt the ‘Safe System Approach’ which is widely used in developed countries, especially in the European Union. This is despite Malaysia having pledged to commit to the UN Resolution on Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020).

The Safe System Approach doesn’t solely blame on the fault of the road users for every accident that happens, but considers the ability of the road system (e.g. the vehicles or road design) to ‘forgive’ the mistakes by road users; and, if the accident happens, it won’t result in death or severe injury.

Stark contrast

This is in stark contrast with what Malaysians have been repeatedly told, that road users’ attitude is the cause of accidents. Astro Awani’ s recent interview with Miros director-general Prof Dr Wong Shaw Voon is another proof that the government has no idea how to tackle the road safety issue; whereby Wong blamed the ‘attitude’ of road users for the high number of accidents. This is not what is suggested by the system approach.

Sweden, for example, has low road fatalities as it adopts this system. The road safety problem is tackled from a multi-pronged approach, and its government invests heavily in providing safe road infrastructures for all categories of road users (including pedestrians and cyclists) to ensure that even if the ‘mistakes’ are made, those mistakes would not result in death or serious injury.

Therefore, road authorities in Sweden are not only busy campaigning, educating, and enforcing laws; but also working hard in improving the design and quality of road facilities.

In developed countries, their authorities are concerned over the safety of children who walk or cycle to school, but in Malaysia, our transport minister and senior government officers’ children may not even think about it as their kids may be chauffeur-driven to school, unlike the common folks. Hence, they don’t even bother about the absence of pedestrian facilities or run-down school buses that are used to ferry children.

Only when an accident occurs and lives are lost, then they will busy blaming whoever they could, but themselves.

Blaming attitudes of road users shouldn’t come from someone who head a research organisation on road safety. Before blaming the attitude of road users, Wong should ask whether the government has provided adequate public transportation throughout the country - in all cities and small towns - as the need for transportation doesn’t only arise in the Klang Valley.

In fact, as we know, the state of public transportation in the Klang Valley itself is horrendous.

Have you seen how choatic is the traffic in front of the Transport Ministry building in Putrajaya? The staff and visitors even park their cars haphazardly!

Safe motorcycle lanes a must

The transport minister and heads of his various agencies must also ask themselves whether they have done enough to convince the government to provide safe motorcycle lanes throughout the country, as separating motorcyclists with other types of road users is not an option, but a must.

Similarly, they must also ask themselves whether they have ensured that the pedestrian facilities exits in every corner of the country, so that children can walk safely to school.

Besides, I wonder if Miros or JKJR dares to urge reduction of speed limit on our congested highways in view of increasing number of fatal accidents due to over-speeding and high traffic volumes.

Of 19 people killed every day, some are breadwinners for the family, some are professionals, some are infants who have just returned from hospitals.

Contrary to what top government officers think, they actually get killed for the fault of potholes, dangerous junctions (which are ignored by authorities), speeding vehicles (due to lack of enforcement), hit by unlicensed drivers (also because of poor enforcement) or simply because the absence of pedestrian crossing facilities or poor lighting at night. In short, it’s not all because they have bad attitudes!

Stop conveniently blaming the road users! Unless all measures have been taken to ensure the safety with proper infrastructures and facilities, and then the ‘accident’ still happen, then we can probably say that it is because of the road users’ fault. Otherwise, those who in-charge of road safety must ask themselves first - have we done enough?

If they accidents continue to happen - again and again - on the same spot, or the same stretch, with the same pattern, the blame should point to the poor road maintenance or badly designed road. If no action is taken for remedy, those in-charge (whether they’re from the ministry or from the local government), should be made accountable and responsible for the road crime!

Last but not least, the poor progress of road safety as a whole could probably hamper Malaysia’s status of achieving the developed nation status by 2020. No developed nation has road safety record as bad as ours. Liow and his men must buckle up and deliver. It is the government’s duty to ensure that our roads are safe, and efforts must take place to ensure that it happens.

Miros and JKJR shouldn’t be sleeping, or merely meeting the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) without showing the outcomes - which is reduction in number of fatalities and accident cases - as these two agencies are running on taxpayers’ money.

It is high time for the opposition members of parliament to table a motion of votes of no-confidence against our big-time failure, the transport minister!