Malaysia is considered relatively safe for driving compared to other developing countries. But if we observe past years’ and recent road accidents statistics/reports, we can perceive that the propensity of road accidents in Malaysia is on the rise. Now I think, Malaysia really requires an investigation in the geographical distribution and regional variation of accidents rather than looking at the accidents in a national perspective. There may be certain geographical areas where accident proneness may be higher.
These variations in accidents can be analyzed by developing a set of geographical indicators for different categories of vehicles (buses/cars/motorcycles/tucks) such as percentage of accidents involving a particular category of vehicle in a particular geographical area (state/district); vehicle related accidents per 100 vehicles in a particular geographical area; accidents per million vehicle kilometers in a particular geographical area, etc These indicators may be rudimentary in nature as they only indicate the extent of problem and have several limitations.
Furthermore, these indicators can be used for developing an accident proneness index for each geographical division. The following figure shows an approach that can be adopted for developing an Accident Proneness Index for each category of vehicles. It may be generally assumed that the traveling environment in general is unsafe due to a large number of factors. However, there are certain specific factors that influence accidents (for a particular category of vehicle) more adversely than other minor factors. The factors of unsafe environment such as road condition, driving habits, condition of vehicles, enforcement level, etc. are difficult to measure effectively.
Accidents are generally classified as single vehicle accidents in which the vehicle is either colliding with fixed objects or with pedestrians or the vehicle may fall in a ditch etc. and multiple vehicle accidents in which two or more than two vehicle can either collide head–on, or one vehicle may collide with the front vehicle at the back or may a have side-swipe type collision. Studying the collision pattern will give an idea about the accident pattern. It was of interest to note that (in most of the studies conducted elsewhere) two vehicles of the some type were rarely involved.
In fact two buses or two trucks or two cars rarely collide together. Similar findings can be found and will be useful in road accident analysis. Most of the accidents are attributed to the fault of the driver. It is mainly due to the need for fixing the responsibility on some one. Generally the fault is placed on the driver of the bigger vehicles, unless the cause of the accident is obvious, such as fire, electrocution etc. Mechanical causes such as brake failure, tyre burst etc. are also there in lesser number of cases. Therefore, the majority of accident causes are linked with road conditions and driver behaviour.
In most of the accidents, a single factor is not present and an accident is a result of a number of complex factors that jointly and singly may be responsible for the accident. Some of the important factors of vehicle accidents are (i) demographic characteristics of drivers - It is said, "Young drivers and new vehicles are not a safe combination". It is common practice to see very young drivers handling quite heavy vehicles of modern technology. These vehicles have better acceleration and deceleration rates and consequently can stop in very short time and also pick up speed quickly.
The behaviour of the driver generally governs the attitudes of the driver. Rash and negligent attitudes may result in more accidents. Socio-economic background was also found to influence the driving behaviour. (ii) driving fatigue-excessive driving, late night or early morning driving, long route driving etc. may also lead to accidents. (iii) road network limitations-whether the roads are in agreement with the stipulations regarding the quality of road surface, curvature, gradient, sight distance etc. (iv) excessive speed, i. e. in order to perform more trips and maximum revenue, buses may exceed speed limits.
(v) heterogeneous traffic - two vehicles of the same types normally do not collide with each other. In major roads in Malaysia, the traffic is very heterogeneous and consequently results in greater number of traffic accidents. (vi) driving checks- drivers are not generally checked for their driving behaviour. In western countries "Sobriety checks", are found to give positive results. Such checks are conducted during late night and early hours to find out drunken and sleepy drivers. During daytime sobriety checks are conducted to book speeding and rash driving.
(vii) Lack of medical facilities- according to sources available, fewer people die on the spot while more people succumb to their injuries either on the way to or at the hospital. This indicates the lack of trauma care facilities and absence of speedy transportation of accident victims from the accident spot to the hospital. Actually, there should be a well-connected network of trauma care centres, doctors, and ambulance services all along the major roads. Ideally the accident victims should get first aid within 15 minutes, and full medical within an hour.
(viii) ill-maintained vehicles-heavy vehicles are not maintained for accident free driving and drivers of these vehicles are driving excessively. Buses are at times over loaded, which may result in sudden tyre burst, axle breakdown, brake failure etc. Enforcement measures and improvement in road conditions would also reduce accidents. In fact integrated measures in the form of road improvement, driver education, road safety education to school children and public and effective enforcement will reduce accidents considerably.
