JUNE 19 — Malaysia is no stranger to the attitude of bending road rules for ‘convenience’. Take a look at the car next to you while you’re driving and you may notice either of the following: the driver isn’t wearing a seatbelt, the rear seat passengers are not buckled-in or worse, there is a child (or children) at the front seat without a seat belt. Once in a while, this issue will reappear in some news sources but usually as a non-impactful article. Kudos to MIROS for reminding about the dangers of not wearing the seat belt but honestly, more could be done at all levels of society from consistent government enforcement to instilling the habit at home or during driving lessons for to-be ‘P’ license drivers.
In Malaysia, even though it has been warned from time-to-time not to use dummy buckles to trick the seat belt reminders, a quick search on any shopping platform will proof that such accessories are still within a press of a button and looking at the sale numbers, there is a demand for such dumb items. What most people don’t realise (or ignorant of the fact) is that the seat belt is the main source of mitigating an accident impact. Your car may have the latest and best airbags, 5-star NCAP ratings and autonomous braking systems but these systems will fail to protect the occupants if you end up being thrown around (or even out of) a vehicle during a crash. This also applies to rear seat passengers where the impact from a rear seat passenger could end up killing front seat occupants. Bear in mind, 50km/h is enough for possible death. Imagine your fate at 110km/h, or even at higher speeds for the high speed junkie.
The situation is made worse when certain civil servants are exempted from wearing seat belts as long as it is approved by the ministry May it be the police, fire and rescue department or an ambulance, it is common in Malaysia for their personnel to drive around without their seat belt even when it is not an emergency. In the UK’s BBC’s ‘Ambulance’ documentary, the occupants are seen to be wearing their seat belts at all times. This is a stark contrast to some of Malaysia’s emergency response personnel who ‘vlog’ their emergencies on Youtube and blatantly show that no seat belts are worn throughout the journey. Do the rakyat think that because our civil servants do not buckle up, it is also safe for the ordinary citizen to do so? This mind-set obviously needs to be changed and the government should outlaw any seat belt exemption requested by any ministry. For the fact that Malaysia is categorized by WHO in the “Global status report on road safety 2018” as having “Seat-belt law applies to front seats occupants” puts Malaysia to shame compared to other countries within the Asian region who are categorised as “Seat-belt law applies to all occupants”.
On the topic of driver education and habits, much is left to be desired. There are families who are totally ignorant of the effects of not wearing seat belts until a loved one gets killed, for example, the accident in 2017 where a child was flung out of the car. There are also a few stories where the drivers ‘interrogate’ the passenger when wearing the rear seat belt. I was once a victim of such ‘investigation’ when I rode in a Grabcar with friends. For driver education, I wasn’t taught by the instructor on the necessity of wearing seat belts during the L-license lecture. Plus, I’m sure most would agree that we’ve been told to only wear it to just pass the test. As for safety campaigns, I would appreciate being bombarded with JKJR/JPJ/MIROS safety adverts rather than annoying ‘Shopee’ or ‘Disney+ Hotstar’ adverts. The last effective road safety campaigns, in my opinion, were from at least 10 years ago when JKJR promoted impactful material with the tagline ‘Anda mampu mengubahnya’, Petronas StreetSmart had roadshows all over Malaysia and Shell organised the Shell Traffic Games. I believe the current younger generation are not exposed to such campaigns and it is a shame that such efforts are not being actively promoted or for transport-related companies, considered as a corporate social responsibility.
With the current situation of seat belt usage in Malaysia, one would wonder, should car manufacturers make seat belt installation optional in Malaysia since there is a sizeable majority who don’t use it? There will be instant savings of a few hundred ringgits in manufacturing costs and you will save the effort of those who are involved in the research of active and passive vehicle safety systems. For the rakyat, one should have this thought on which is better: seat belt buckling that takes about 5 seconds or a few months in the hospital or death due to an accident by a reckless driver?
**This is the personal opinion of the writers and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
