ROAD ACCIDENT IS NUMBER ONE KILLER.DISCUSS

ROAD ACCIDENT IS NUMBER ONE KILLER.DISCUSS

Every year the statistics of road accidents have been increasing and this is very disturbing and alarming. Most of the accidents are due to the human errors. Some too due to technical faults in vehicle maintainences and the conditions of municipal roads and highways roads. The tragedies are unbearable and it is depressing to see many innocent people died due to human carelessness and recklessness. The figures triple up and worst still increasing more and more during festive seasons especially when the enforcement operations are not in operation.As the problem is becoming a great concern to the goverment. I think there must be drastic measures to be taken and many definite reforms have to be done immediately.

    Most of the major accidents are caused by human errors  particularly speeding.The are many inconsiderate and reckless drivers who like to speed up on the road without caring the interest of other road users. Worst still, there are irresponsible,tired, sleepy and drunk drivers who still drive and not bothering the safety of other road users.These include those driving heavy vehicles  such as container, timber lorry, trailer and express bus and many more.They worked overtime to earn extra income at the expense of other road users.There is no control on them especially the employers who wanted to rake in more trips and profits forcing them to drive in and out without adequate rest or break.These reckless drivers are not only being overstressed  and tired but being very selfish and acting like the king of the road.They also bully the other road users who are driving small vehicles and you can imagine what happen next.Tragedies and tragedies happened went unnoticed by the authorities and these drivers who caused injuries and sometimes death drive freely and openly the next day as if nothing happened.

    Ofcourse there are other human factors that also contributed to the higher number of road accidents. These include bad driving habits, impatience and disobeying traffic rules. As for bad driving habit, these drivers are not giving signals when turning left or right,applying immediate brake which panic the other road users,manning of telephone and sms( short message system) while driving.These habits caused serious problems to other road users.Some drivers are definitely impatient.You can see such situations when the drivers are not  queueing up at the traffic junction and overtaking at double lanes.This selfish act brought the anger and fury of other road users. On top of that, the drivers also keeping the habit of  disobey the traffic rules that are gazetted. In this case, they parked haphazardly at the wrong place and do not follow the signboards along the road.They must definitely change their attitudes.Otherwise we may end up with more and more accidents on the road.

   On the other hand,there are cases of accidents because of the poor road conditions. As we know, there are a lot of roads that are not tarmac , uneven  and have many potholes. These all can lead to accidents as the drivers are not noticing the problem that occur especially at night. Beside that, it can be considered that the road design deficiency as one of the factors of road accidents as the designer does not take seriously what will happen  next along the highway such as landslides and flood.Some areas do not have street lights which endanger the road-users.

Some places do not have sufficient signboards to alert the motorists of danger ahead especially of sharp corners and work in progress done by the maintainence team.We hope to see more statistics of these accidents to confirm the higher rates due to poor maintainence of vehicles and road conditions.This would be good for the relevant Ministry to take appropriate actions.

Lacking of enforcement of rules is another glaring factor which caused the higher accident rates.Normal operations are only conducted during festive seasons usually two weeks before and after.The police traffic and road transport department officers are responsible for the enforcement but we never see them regularly conducting operations during off-seasons.The excuse of not enough personnels to man the operations are normal phenomenon.So more and more deaths will be seen during off-seasons.

Conclusively,this phenomena can be reduced only if the drivers prefer changing their attitudes during driving and be more responsible to other road users. They must remember that the tragedies can happen at anytime. Also they must think of the loved ones at home when they are on the road.