NST Leader: Why these endless road tragedies?

New Straits Times

a day ago

It has happened again, just as road safety experts had warned. Fifteen lives were lost on Monday in a collision between a tour bus ferrying Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris students and a Perodua Alza multipurpose vehicle on the East-West Highway in Gerik, Perak. Sultan of Perak Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah has decreed improvements to law enforcement.
The authorities must follow the royal decree to the letter to avoid such tragedies. The mangled remains of what was once a tour bus are not just a tragic image of the past; they might be images of many futures if the authorities keep doing the same thing.
We are told that the Road Transport Department (JPJ) is conducting a safety inspection, and an audit on the express bus and its operator. Let's be blunt: this is after the fact. For sure, such audits will arm the authorities with evidence to make every individual, from the operator to the driver, accountable should they be found to have broken any laws.
But conducting an audit is one thing, and acting on the findings is another. Just like discovering that the tour bus had 21 traffic summonses and the driver 18 and still allowing both to be on the road.
From Aug 13, 2007, to Nov 5, 2022, there have been seven major bus crashes that claimed 124 lives. Were audits conducted on these buses and their operators? If so, how many operators have been charged in court or had their businesses suspended? With tragedies like this happening with troubling frequency, the people have the right to know.
But JPJ must not stop at the audit of the tour bus and its operator. It is time for JPJ to go on a nationwide inspection and audit of all heavy vehicles and their operators.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke has told the media that the tour bus had no seat belts for passengers.
To discover this after a tragedy is a tragedy itself. Had an audit been done, the bus operator could have been compelled to install seat belts even though the bus was built before the seat-belt law came into force.
There shouldn't be an exception for passenger buses. The minister also told the press that dashboard cameras and speed limiters are in the process of being made mandatory.
The "in the process" is troubling, to say the least. We have heard this before from a former transport minister. Nothing happened. But what happened were tragedies after tragedies.
Operators will resist, because more trips mean more profits. If the aim is to save lives, then the authorities must throw the statute book at them.
The fear appears to be that such devices can easily be disabled by the operators as the owners of lorries are already doing it to speed limiters and Global Positioning System. But that should not be a reason for not installing the devices.
The law is there; just haul the operators to court. Operators who allow their heavy vehicles to turn into killer machines must be put out of business. Period.