Road Transport Act 1987 / Act 333 Overview and Summary

1.0 Introduction

Road transportation can defined as the transportation of passengers or goods on roads. Road transport include buses, lorries, vans, cars, trucks, motorcycles and animals such as horse or oxen. Road transportation brings a lot of convenient to the society and become more common  now a day. According to the World Factbook,  Malaysia's road network covers 144,403 kilometres (89,728 mi), of which 116,169 kilometres (72,184 mi) is paved, and 1,821 kilometres (1,132 mi) is express ways. The longest highway of the country, the North-South Expressway, extends over 800 kilometres (497 mi) between the Thai border and Singapore.Compare to other mode of  transportation such as air and rail transport, road transport much less capital investment, efficient door to door service, more flexible, less cost  and more suitable for short distance. These is the advantages of road transports and the factor of  the volume of the road transportation keep increasing. In the other hand, the increasing of the volume of the road transportation directly increase the rate of accident in Malaysia.

        The rate of road accident keep rising and become more serious. In Asia alone, 400,000 people are killed on the roads annually and more than four million injured (Kareem, Review of Global Menace of Road Accidents with Special Reference to Malaysia- A Social Perspective, 2003). According to WHO, every year, nearly one million people are killed, three millions are severely disabled for life and thirty millions are injured in road traffic accidents.

Issues

Road accidents is global issue and according to the research states that it may be will become the third causes that lead to the death in the worldwide by 2020. (Transport and Research Laboratory, UK International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 1998) The cases of severe accident on road is rapidly increasing every year in Malaysia. According to the New Straits Times report that, in year 2016 the number of fatal road accident was increasing compare to previous year and there are more than 7,000 people lives is lost from the fatal road accidents. (Babulal, 2017) Besides that, Malaysia known as the country which having a higher road traffic death rate and place in the rank on top 18 of countries in car accidents. It is estimated that the road traffic death rate about 25.0 per 100,000 population in Malaysia. (WorldAtlas, 2016) This is shown that Malaysia have a high risk and severe issues on road accident. From the transport statistic 2015 of Ministry of Transport Malaysia shown that the total casualties and damages caused by the road accident in Malaysia in 2006 to 2015, the total number of accident is continuous increasing especially the rate of the death in the accident (refer to the Table 1).

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Table 1: Total Casualties and Damages Caused By Road Accident, Malaysia, 2006-2015
Source: Transport Statistics Malaysia 2015, Ministry of Transport Malaysia

Accident had been identify as the main causes of death after heart disease, stroke, influenza and pneumonia in Malaysia. (New Straits Times, 2016) Government and road user should be alert about this issue. There are several severe road accident happened in Malaysia. For example, in 2016, on the North-South Expressway had a severe road accident happened and caused two people was killed in the incident which had about 16 vehicle was crashed. (The Straits Times, 2016) From the severe accident there are carrying many of negative impact such as the cost of repair, human life, injuries. Moreover, in this modernly century many people is hold the mobile phone all the time no matter in where and when. Especially while driving, driver often use their mobile phone and cause the accident occur. This may harmful for the road safety, it is not just harm for other people safety but also may dangerous driver itself. This is a serious issue which concern by the Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai which ask the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) to do a research and let the road user know the significant of the road safety and it is a serious matter to be concern. (Bernama, Mobile phone use main cause of road accidents, 2016)

Besides that, recently the most serious cases of road accident was the car rams into cycling teens in Johor Bahru. According to the article, report that, from the incident there are six teenager was died at the scene and the other two teenager was died on the way to hospital. There are five rider also have a critical injuries. From the result of investigation, the Assistant Commissioner Salleh said that, due to the road is undulates and twists and causes the driver unable to seen the group until it was too late. (MacMichael, 2017) However, those youths are not comply the law which form a group and rides at night-time with the modified bicycles like remove the brakes. The action of the youths are illegal although the road is undulates and twists and causes the driver crash to them. In the other side, actually the teenager rides on bicycles at the night time was long concerned by the local police. The night cycling in the road is highly risky to getting incident happen. Therefore, from last year police was continued this operation and there are 17 bikes had been seized from the operation in 2017. The law enforcement had been do their obligation however human behavior is hard to expect. In addition, government may enforce the special cycling lane for the bicycle rider in future in every state, it also one of the solution to minimize the rate of getting this kid of incident.

Even though, having a best policy to cover it but the accident cases might happened again. The use of transport modes and infrastructure is never entirely safe. This is because human error is the main reason that causes the accident happen. According to the Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said that there are “A total of 80.6 per cent of the road accidents are caused by human error.” (Babulal, 2017) Due to human errors especially in commercial vehicles’ drivers and various forms of physical failures (mechanical or infrastructural) injuries, damages and even death occur.

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Factors of Road Accident

Malaysia is a country which cannot without road transport to run daily activities. Most of the Malaysian have their private car or motorcycle to reach their destination, because it is more convenience for activities like go for working place, go to school, or go for leisure activities. By the way, in Malaysia also have public transport from one place to another place. Because of all the citizen’s daily activities must using road transport, thus the probability risk of accident occur is higher. From the discussion above, we can realize that the number of road accident in Malaysia is increasing every year and every day the newspaper may have the reporting about road accident. In the same time, Malaysia government and authority agency has put efforts to solving this serious problem.