Starting young on road safety

Star: PUTRAJAYA: Children as young as seven years old will be educated on road safety starting next year. The move is part of a long-term project to reduce the high number of road accidents and fatalities in the country.
Transport Minister Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy said 7,601 schools nationwide had been identified to introduce the lessons next year.
Malaysia, which recorded the highest number of road fatalities in the world last year – with 4.2 deaths for every 10,000 vehicles and 23.5 deaths for every 100,000 population – plans to cut down the rate by half in five years.
Chan said Year One to Year Three pupils would be the first batch to be given road safety lessons, which would be incorporated in the Bahasa Melayu subject.
Lessons for the second batch of students, those from Year Four to Year Six, will start in 2008, while those in Form One and Two will be the third batch, starting in 2009. The final batch, in 2010, will be Form Four students.
“Forms Three and Form Five students will be exempted due to the two major examinations they sit for,” he told reporters after the launch of the Road Safety Plan of Malaysia from 2006 to 2010 by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi yesterday.
The plan, carrying the slogan Drive Safe, Ride Safe, Walk Safe, has identified nine strategies with 52 programmes.
Road safety lessons in schools is a programme under the first strategy, which is to enhance and sustain educational and psychological measures in road safety.
The second strategy is e-enforcement, utilising state-of-the-art technology to reduce human error, followed by enhancing engineering initiatives as the third strategy.
Chan said the engineering approach was to identify“black spots” or accident-prone stretches of roads, including roads under the jurisdiction of local councils, to the Public Works Department to ensure proper treatment.
“Under this strategy, the Government also plans to build special motorcycle lanes along certain stretches of roads nationwide. This is to reduce fatal accidents involving motorcyclists, as special lanes have proven to be safer for them according to a study by Universiti Putra Malaysia,” he said, adding that RM63mil had been allocated under the Ninth Malaysia Plan for this purpose.
The Cabinet has also approved the setting-up of a Road Safety Research Institute, which will be a statutory body under the Transport Ministry.
On funding for the five-year road safety plan, Chan said the total Government contribution was not known yet, and added that the private sector had promised to make contributions.
“The General Insurance Association of Malaysia has promised to give 0.25% of its premium collection which amounts to about RM15mil a year, while motorcycle manufacturers have pledged to contribute RM10 for each registered vehicle.”