The express bus that crashed on the North-South Expressway near Pagoh did not have the Speed Limiter Device (SLD) because it was manufactured and registered in 2013, before the SLD was made compulsory for buses manufactured after January 2015, said Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai.

"The Transport Ministry has mandated that all new-model buses manufactured effective January 2015 be installed with the SLD, in line with United Nations Regulation 89," he said in a statement today.

In the incident, at about 3.30am on Saturday, the express bus plunged into a 10-metre-deep ravine and ploughed into the concrete wall of a tunnel at Kampung Jayor at Km137.3 of the North-South Expressway (northbound), killing 14 people including the driver and his daughter, and injuring 16 others.

Liow said the ministry, through the Logistics and Land Transport Division, would carry out a comprehensive audit of the entire chain of public service vehicle design, construction, approval and inspection procedures.

"The audit shall include record-keeping of the relevant agencies. The new audit will be carried out and reported in the first quarter of 2017," he said.

Liow said the ministry was in the process of establishing the Malaysian Transport Safety Board as recommended by the Advisory Panel to execute the function of independent and transparent investigation on major safety incidents, research for recommendations to improve safety, and monitoring and evaluation of safety initiatives of all modes of transport.

"I have instructed my ministry and the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) to monitor the implementation of all recommendations outlined by the panel," he said.

He said relevant agencies under the ministry's purview also had been instructed to report the status and the progress of the implementation of related recommendations.

"The ministry will make public the status of the report on the respective implementation via the related agency’s official website from time to time," he said.

The Advisory Panel was established to evaluate and review the investigation report after the Genting Highlands-Kuala Lumpur bus crash in 2013, and the panel submitted its report with 51 recommendations to the ministry in January 2014.

Out of that, 22 measures under the ministry’s jurisdiction had been put into action, including the mandatory SLD installation. The remaining measures were being implemented by 16 related agencies and stakeholders, he said.

- Bernama