Malaysia

Yes I Am In A Cynical Mood… So I am going to pick on the Royal Malaysian Police

By Sharizal ⋅ November 16, 2005 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Just because.

Recently, Pak Lah lamented on why the death tolls on the road keep on increasing despite having ‘done everything’.

I am not so sure Pak Lah.

Even the latest initiative by the Royal Malaysian police (RMP) lacks comprehension. SAC Datuk Gingkoi Seman Pancras unveilled plans to installed spy cameras to combat errant motorists and these systems will cost between RM100-200million will be deployed in stages in” all cities and major towns, highways and federal roads”.

Let’s not talk about the further infringement of our civil liberties by transforming our country into a police state like China, although some may argue that we are one already, however, I sincerely hope that the implementation plan would not be as what Datuk Ginkoi mentioned i.e. cities, major towns, highways and federal roads… in that order of course.

Why do I wish to highlight this?

First let us look at the death toll statistics taken from the RMP website:

OPS SIKAP VIII: Highways: 19, Fed roads: 62, State roads: 66, Town roads: 27
OPS SIKAP VII: Highways: 29, Fed roads: 91, State roads: 48, Town roads: 21
OPS SIKAP V: Highways: 20, Fed roads: 82, State roads: 40, Town roads: 18

And this is the latest I could find on OPS SIKAP IX accidents (please alert me if you find a better piece of statistic):

sejumlah 866 kemalangan dilaporkan berlaku pada hari raya ke tujuh itu, dengan 398 berlaku di jalan bandaran, jalan Persekutuan (190), jalan negeri (129), lebuh raya (96) manakala 53 lagi di jalan lain.

and also on MGG Pillai on deaths:

Accidents on federal roads claimed 102 lives, nearly half of the fatalities during the 15-day operation, 23 deaths on highways, 67 on state roads, 27 on town roads and 14 on other roads.

So where does the numbers lead us to? Statistically it shows that the number of deaths occur from highest to lowest at (1) Federal Roads, (2) State Roads, (3) Town Roads, and (4) Highways.

It is no wonder that many motorists accuse the Traffic Police of milking money from highway users with the purchase of many state of the art cameras to capture errant speeding motorists red handed. And the proof over this rampant commercialisation of leveraging on highway abusers is at the recent Merdeka 50% discount to encourage the collection of outstanding fines amounting RM3.4 million ringgit.

I may be wrong to conclude this but it seems to me that the RMP seems to be more than happy to pick on highway users and perhaps somewhat empirically these are the the users who are able to pay their fines and summonses.

And even all suggestions to eradicate deaths and accidentsd on the road seems to point towards further milking of these ‘consumers-who-can-pay’.

What about putting all these camera on federal and state roads first? And what about putting more police personnel on federal and state roads rather than having them patrolling the highways? The higways have the least number casualties!

Better traffic police enforcement on federal and state roads in my opnion will have a direct result on the numbers of road casualties. The figures on federal and state roads make up more than half of the number of casualties.

Unless the RMP is seen to tackle the problem with festival road deaths head on by addressing deaths at federal and state roads first, highway users will always see that the RMP as only taking advantage of speeding motorists.

And yes, Pak Lah, we have not done everything yet.

Some of them just seem to be too busy wrongfully arresting party goers and stripping chinese female nationals… sigh.