Road Accidents Malaysia

Nowadays, road accidents are very common in Malaysia. Everyday we read newspaper we also can saw many news about there are many peoples involved in the road accidents. First of all, what is means by road accidents? Road accidents are means that when some automobile crash together or the vehicle crash on the side of the road or the peoples at the road. According to the sources from Royal Malaysian Police (n.d), there is a statistic mentioning the number of the road accidents from the year 1998 until the year 2006. I realize that the total numbers of road accidents happen in each year of the year 1998 until year 2006 are reach six digit of number. This is huge and terrible numbers, and from the statistic it also stated that five to six thousands peoples dead in a year because of involved in the road accidents. On the other hand, it also means that, every year there is five to six thousands peoples losing of their love member such as, love partner, family members and so on. The number of road accidents is also increased from the year 1998 until the year 2006. The number of road accidents is increased from three hundred thousand until five hundred thousand. There are many types of vehicle on the road, such as motorcycle, bus, car, taxi and goods vehicle. According to the statistic from the Royal Malaysian Police (n.d), it claims that, car is like the water in a human body, it stand 75% to 80% out of all types of vehicle which carried the number two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand out of the total road accident happen in the year 1998 until 2006. As we know that, Malaysia is a multinational country, there are many different types of religion in Malaysia. All different types of religion will celebrate their own festival such as Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Years, Happy Deepavali and so on. Almost all Malaysian will go back to the hometown for the celebration. During the season of the festival, road accident will happen more often compare to the normal day. According to LegalMatch (n.d), they believe that, there are several causes of road accident such as, the behavior of driver, mechanical failure, road conditions and also weather. We as a Malaysian we need to reduce the number of road accident by some solutions and it will be discuss more detail in the following paragraph.

Let’s discuss about the first categorize of road accidents which is because of the driver behavior. According to LegalMatch (n.d), they agree that driver behavior is one of the causes of road accident, and they also claim that there are 98% of road accidents happen because of the distracted driver. There are many types of driver behavior that will cause road accident and most of the driver would not realize that those actions are dangerous while driving. The first types of driver behavior that will cause road accidents are on phone while driving. Mobile phone now is very advanced in technologies even can watch television programs by online. Some of the drivers use this kind of technologies while they are driving. As we know that we just have a pair of eyes and we cannot watch the road and the phone on the same time. On this situation we will lack of concentration and it will cause us involve in the road accident. Beside that, some driver also use the mobile phone to sending Short Messages Services and on call whiles they driving. The second types of driver behavior are the driver adjusting the radio or the CD player while they driving. After we finish heard the CD we will change another CD for some different songs. Let’s imagines if the car in on drive and the driver are trying to find for the other CD from the dashboard, this is will cause some of the moment the driver will not notice the conditions of the front road and this will cause the accident occur. There are also high possible chances of accidents will happen if we are trying to adjust the radio tunnel when we are driving. The third types of driver behavior are drunk driving. According to the articles by Alcohol Problems and Solutions (n.d) they insist that a driver with high blood alcohol content (BAC) has the higher risk will involve in car accidents. This is because when a person with high BAC will affect the person coordination and this have been proved by Alcohol Problems and Solutions (n.d). There is an experiment show that, a person is trying to write such words “Drinking doesn’t affect my driving” before drunk and after drunk. The result show that, the person after drunk will write the words more blur and unallocated. On the other hand, it also means that if we are drunk driving we will drive in the blur condition, and it will cause road accident. Rubbernecking and tailgating also the causes of road accidents. First of all, what is means by rubbernecking? According to LegalMatch (n.d) they claim that, rubbernecking is the driver slow down their cars watching what is going on because of their curiosity and tailgating is means by the driver are follow the front car with a very close distance. When on the highway there is an accidents happen, some of the people will because of curios slow down their cars to watch what was happen, but if there are a person on tailgating the accidents will happen. This is because if there is highway all people are driving with speed and the situation is tailgating. Thus the person will unable to break their car immediately and the tailgating car will crash on the rubbernecking car.

Mechanical failure is consider a category that will cause road accidents. When we talk about car, ask yourself do you service your car at the fixed particular of period. Do you even service your car? We cannot simply look down on the car maintenance. This is because some of the error will happen if we do not service our car and it will cause the road accidents. One of the errors is the lack of breaking system, when we do not service our car we do not know whether our break pad is still in a good condition. If the break pad is not in a good conditions it will cause break failure. Which is also means that, we cannot stop our car when we on driving. This is very dangerous and will cause the road accidents. Beside that, car wipers out of function also make the road accident occur. Imagine that, when we drive on the road and suddenly heavy rain until we cannot look clear at the front of the road. In such situation if the car wipers out of functions we cannot even drive anymore which it also means that we need to stop down our car immediately. It will cause the following car crash on our car because of the heavy rain hard to control the car speed and handling the emergency stop situation that need to face. Tires are also one of the important parts of a car. Without tires the car cannot move, it also bring other means that, if a car suddenly face tires blow up the car will lost of control because of without the tires car cannot be move. When we lost of control it might cause us crash on the side of the road, even there is possible we will crash with other cars on the road.

Beside that, the road conditions also under the road accidents categorize. Oily road is one of the road conditions will cause road accidents. This is because if the road is oily we will easily lost of control because of the tires cannot move in a normal condition when face the oil on the road and will get in drift. Accident will be happen when the car lost of control. Hole on the road also will cause road accident. By the way, why the road will have hole? This is because the roads are long time ago and less of maintenance from government or even if the place is under construction the area of the road also will have many holes because of construction lorry often use the road. Why do hole on the road will cause road accidents? Let’s imagines when we using the road at the night and the road are lack of road light. Such road will cause the motorcycle easy get in the hole and injury because of motorcycle is lack of brightness looks clear the conditions of the road. Nowadays as we can see that rubbish is everyway on the road. Let’s seek for the truth, ask yourself do you throw rubbish on the road before? Just assume that a Malaysian just throw one rubbish on the road the road will full of rubbish. Accident will occur when the road is much rubbish. This is because when we using the road we will try to avoid the rubbish. In addition, if we do not notice the car from our back or side we might crash with them when we are trying to avoid the rubbish.

The last categorize of road accident is because of the weather. Weather is a significant point that we need to view before we are going out to any place. In Malaysia there are only two types of weather which is raining season and muggy day. Raining season will cause us hard to looks in front of the road if there the rain is over heavy. When there is an over heavy rain it will make us hard to estimate the distance between our cars with the car in front of us. Even the road condition we also cannot estimate because of over heavy rain. This will cause the possibility of happen accidents getting high. Muggy day is also as a killer sometimes. This is because when we are driving in the muggy day, we will easily get to asleep because the light sharp into our eyes and the situation in the car is very comfortable because of the cool from air condition. When we fall asleep, we will easily get in to accidents because we do not know that we are driving to where and will cause us crash on the side of the road or crash with other cars on the road.

We as a Malaysian we need to reduce the number of road accidents. We cannot let the number of road accident increase anymore. First of all, we need to do best on our own responsibility. There are some solutions to reduce the number of road accidents. “Car maintenance” is one of the solutions. We need to ensure our car is being service on the fixed particular period. This is for check out whether our car is still on safe conditions for us to drive or there is any mechanical failures occur such as break failure, tires, wipers, and so on. Beside that, “rest” it is also a very significant rule that we need to be prepare before we drive. We need to ensure that we have enough sleep before we are drive. This is to make sure that when the muggy day we not easily get to asleep. Furthermore, with enough rest we can be more patient, put more effort to control our emotion and pay more attention while drive. Everyday before we go out we need to read the news of weather forecast. We need to ensure that the day is good weather and would not have any storming rain, if there are storming rain try to avoid go out. Mobile phone and cigarette should keep away while on driving. Try to avoid using mobile phone sending short message services and do not smoke while driving. As we know that, god just created a pair of hand for us to live in this world. If we use a hand to smoke or using mobile phone we would not have enough hand to control the steering while we take U-turn. The last matter we need to do prevention is not involved in drunk driving. Drunk driving is very dangerous we need to remember that, there is always some significant person in our life waiting for us to go back home with safety.

Moreover, according to Nordin (n.d), he claims that government also takes lot actions to reduce the numbers of road accidents. The most popular actions known as “OPS Sikap”, this actions is take by government when there is festival season and the durations of this actions is fifteen day period during the main festival such as Chinese New Years and so on. This action is taking by the government for stop the people over speed when driving back to the hometown. If there is any person over speed limits driving will get summons from the policeman and the payments of the summons is higher compare to the normal day. Government also provides road maintenance such as patching the hole on the road to ensure the road is safety to use. Beside that, government also plan to build more street light on the road, this is to ensure the road are enough lightning and all people can be more safety to use the road. In addition, government also plan to build more pedestrian crossing to ensure all people can cross the road without taking the risk being crash by a car on the road. In the media side, government try to advertise some slogan to alert all people more careful when using the road such as, “Do not make the red colour become yours last view”, “Ensure your helmet are wearing properly”, “Make sure you have giving direction signal before you take a turn” and so on.

As a conclusion, there are a lot causes of road accidents but the main causes of road accidents occur is because of driver behavior. I think moral are play a very significant role in our life, it teach us how to love other person and ourselves but before we love other person we need to learn how to love ourselves and appreciate the life that have been given by god for us. We as a driver, we need to responsibility for what we have done, cannot done some actions that might cause accident occur or injury other person such as, on phone while driving, drunk driving and so on. Those actions are really dangerous if we do it when we are drive because we cannot control the car well with doing such actions. Remember that, our family member are always worried about us and carried about us. There is no peoples are wishing to involve in a road accidents, it is really a tragedy it make a lot of people lost of their family member. Beside that, all Malaysian should be cooperating to reduce the number of road accidents and our slogan “Malaysia Boleh”.

REFERENCES

Abdul Rahman, N, Road safety situation in Malaysia n.d. Retrieved: November 13, 2007,

From:http://www.unescap.org/ttdw/common/Meetings/TIS/EGM%20Presentations/Malaysia_RSpresentation.pdf

Common causes of car accidents lawyers n.d. Retrieved: November 12, 2007, From:

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/common-causes-of-car-accidents.html

Royal Malaysian Police, Table 1.10 n.d. Retrieved: November 13, 2007, From:

http://www.mot.gov.my/BM/stat/darat/JADUAL%201.10.pdf