Accidents - the good and bad news

Star: KUALA LUMPUR: The number of bus accidents as well as deaths resulting from them went down significantly last year compared with previous years.
Road Safety Department director-general Suret Singh said the number of accidents involving buses dropped to under 8,000 last year from 11,959 in 2004.
As for fatalities, he said there were just over 40 deaths last year compared with 69 the previous year.
He said the exact numbers for 2005 would only be available at the end of this month when the 30-day period after Dec 31 required for collecting statistics expires.
“This is one of the reasons why the number of injury cases from road accidents has gone down by about 25% last year compared with the previous years,” he said when presenting his paper entitled “Road Safety Issues: Key Challenges” at a seminar at the University Malaya Medical Centre yesterday.
Suret Singh said the drop in bus accidents could be attributed to the Government's focus on bus transportation in its efforts to improve road safety.
“In October 2004, the Government put into effect several measures including the requirement for a second driver as well as for drivers to stop for rest after every two hours,” he said.
However, he said the situation was not as rosy when it came to lorries because the number of accidents and deaths were still going up.
Suret Singh also said he was still not happy with the degree of enforcement.
“Enforcement is like strong medicine which we give when the situation is very bad,” he said, adding that education would be effective in the long term.
To prove this point, he said the daily number of accidents and deaths during Ops Sikap periods when there was increased enforcement was lower than on normal days and especially before Ops Sikap was implemented.
Malaysia Helmets Initiative director Prof Dr R. Krishnan said his research showed that campaigns did not work if they were not followed up with enforcement.
“Surveys done before and after campaigns in Kulim, Petaling Jaya and Banting showed that there was hardly any change to helmet use in these locations,” he said in his presentation entitled “Global burden and tenets of prevention of road traffic injuries.”