Major Causes of Road Accidents

There is nothing new about road accidents. During the recent festive holidays in Malaysia, the 3 main causes of road accidents have been pin-pointed. The 3 causes will be discussed in detail below.
The first major cause is sleepy drivers. Drivers who are driving on a long distance trip tend to fall asleep when driving. The long driving hours would most certainly take a toll on the driver's concentration while on the road.
To avoid accidents due to this cause, drivers should plan several short stops during the long trip. Make regular stops for either a caffeine boost or short naps to keep concentration at a high.
During this time of the year, heavy downpours are to be expected. During a heavy rain, a driver's range of visibility is greatly reduced. Whenever the vehicle in front makes an emergency brake, drivers should be able to react in time.
Due to the rain, the driver behind might not be able to notice and react accordingly. Therefore, rivers should reduce speed and take caution to avoid such accidents especially when driving in a heavy rain.
No matter often we've been told to drive safely, there are errant drivers out there who seem to always be in a rush. Though the speed limit is set at 110km/h, these drivers could be seen speeding at speeds higher than permitted. No amount of summonses could keep these drivers at bay, endangering other drivers on the road.
Drivers should avoid these major causes of road accident and learn to appreciate life.

Where And How Do Accidents Happen And How To Avoid Them

Malaysia is reputed to possess one of the best road systems in the world. But unfortunately, it is also believed that it also has one of the highest rate of accidents.
China, followed very closely by India, holds the top 2 positions for accidents. Malaysia, with a population of only some 25 – 30 million people, including Sabah and Sarawak, has a “death” rate, which averages 7,500 people per year.
Surprisingly, the United States of America, with a population of some 50 million, is reported to have only a death rate only 300 per year.
Every festive occasion, like Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Aidil Fitri, Deepavali, Christmas including New Year, Malaysians especially are very fond of going back to their kampungs or better known as “balik kampung”.
In such massive exodus of drivers back to their home towns, we see thousand of drivers and their families trying their best to reach home as quickly and safely they can.
The government, on its part, realise that it is at this time, that many accidents take place. “Op Sikap Campaigns” or Safety Operation Campaigns are conducted during such festive periods.
Unfortunately, to state, although much money and time is spent, the result achieved is not too encouraging.
Today’s article, attempts to touch upon the topic of how accidents happen and ideally how to avoid them.
Amongst the familiar places where accidents tend to take place are:

1) At junctions.

“T” and cross junction are notorious places of accidents. Stop ideally 2 meters behind the “stop line”.
Drivers are advised to look right. Then look left, then right again, before proceeding.
In coming vehicles obviously have the right of way first. If a stream of cars should be coming continuously ahead of us, then we have to perform the same procedure of looking right, then left and finally looking right again without fail.
By following the above tedious practice, it is eventually hoped we can avoid accidents.

2) Knocking or crashing into vehicles ahead of us.

This is the most frequent mistake a driver makes. The mistake obviously is following too close. Defensive mode of driving, a concept of Australian driving, which the Malaysian authorities are supposedly meant to adopt, suggests a driver ideally follow the “2 seconds” rule.
Anyone hitting a vehicle in front of him is at fault. So, dear readers, do not follow a vehicle too close! Unless you are as good as Formula One driver Jenson Button Or Michael Schumacher, the advise again is, stay away from the vehicle in front of you.

3) Getting hit or knocked into by a vehicle behind you.

Yes, getting crashed into by a vehicle is the other driver’s fault. But, it could also be yours too!
How is this possible, you may ask?
Not looking at side or rear mirrors, not using your indicators or signals, stopping suddenly are but some common mistakes made by most drivers.
If you should wish to stop, I suggest you should ideally wind down your window and do the “hand waving” manual signal which is safer.
By doing this, the driver behind will hopefully be better aware of your intention to stop.

4) Crashing into a vehicle on the opposite side of a highway.

The most disastrous type of all accidents is supposed to be a “head on” crash accident!
A science teacher once told us, should one car traveling at 70 km/h were to hit another car traveling at the same speed, the total impact upon collision would be 140 km/h!
Have you ever heard or read of incidents whereby a vehicle from the left side of a highway crashed across the divider, out of control and crashing into vehicles approaching from the right side on the opposite lane?
Such hypothetical accidents can actually happen.
When the Federal Highway, from Klang to Kuala Lumpur, which stretched approximately 24 miles was being built way back in 1957 (I was about 12 then), the road engineers, Gammon Long, a well renowned British engineering company did in fact build an “earth divider”, triangular in shape, with a base of 4 feet and about 3 feet high, stretching the entire highway measuring 24 miles.
The engineers believed this structure, would prevent any vehicle going out of control and at a speed of 80 – 90 km/h along the highway, would eventually ascend up the divider, overturn or “flip” back to its own left side, thus avoiding or crashing over to the opposite right, thereby avoiding a disastrous accident from happening.
Over the years, our engineers from the Public Works Department, people responsible for our road safety, have since removed the above mentioned structure. They have replaced it with decorative plants and lights and buntings and flags instead.
Why are such triangular shaped earth dividers no longer incorporated into our highways and expressways today? Can a road engineer provide an answer to the above? Or the authorities maybe.
This short article has concentrated on how accidents can happen and the ways to avoid them. Hopefully, it would contribute towards drivers driving in a safer manner and thereby causing fewer accidents.

Road Accidents Rate In Malaysia

In Malaysia, rate of road accidents, casualties and deaths have been increased year by year.

This case involved many people's life without knowing their ages from the young until the old. This is due lack of awareness among citizens of Malaysian. There are lot of factors that cause road accidents, such as driver's attitude, geological factor,
vehicles malfunctioning, weather condition, and so on.. During festival season, the rate of accident is the highest especially during school holiday, Hari
Raya, Christmas, and etc.

Driver's Attitude

As we all know, driver who take alcohol while driving a car have the highest probability getting
involve in car accident. If the alcohol taken excessively, it may not only harm you in term of
health, but in term of tragedy (car accident) !!! You may not die because of long-term of taking
alcohol, but you have the risk die in other situation.


Geological Factor

Often peoples blaming the driver because of their carelessness while driving on the road. But
actually they forgetting something which also one of the factor why the rate of car accident had
never been decline. This is due to the condition of the road and not the selfishness of the driver. Some may not agree but some may agree that most car accident cases is because of the road condition, such as the road surface slippery due to the present of spoiled lubricant oil, lots of "hole" which will cause fatality to the driver who driving extremely fast. But in this case, if we
think logically and rationally, even though the driver driving extremely fast over 200 km/h, the
driver himself can avoid such tragic accident if the road condition is in good shape, and none of this will happen if Malaysia's road have such a smooth and wide surface.

Weather condition

Other than the listed factors above, weather condition also can lead to the increase of car accident rate in Malaysia. For example during heavy rain, suprisingly the statistic of car
accident increase dramatically. This is due to the road surface become slippery because of all the
debris and spoiled oil on the surface of the road have mixed up, and this will contribute problem
to the road consumers.


Car Malfunctioning

We already have been informed by the authority to check and to service our vehicle often every
month to avoid any unnecessary things to happen. But due to the habit of the driver itself that
take lightly about this things eventually will cause negative effect to them. They didn't realize
that it is important to service and do some basic inspection around their vehicle such as check
the tyre pressure, the radiator, lubricant oil level and any other necessary things on their
vehicle before start to drive on the road. So, if one of the tyre puncture at the velocity of
200 km/h, can you imagine what will happen to the car and the driver ?



Statistics of Road Accidents in Malaysia

According to the graph above, during 1980 until 2000 there is a different between road accident rate and road casualties rate. The maroon colour indicates the rate of road accident and grey colour indicates the rate of road casualities. If we look carefully at the above graph,on 1980 untill 2000 the line graph of road accidents start to increase year by year. This shows that the rate of car accident never tend to decrease or decline.

On the other hand, the road casualties have an unsteady line graph, it means that the rate of road casualities is less serious compare to the rate of road accident which keep increasingly each year.If the line of the road accident keep on elevating, it means that lot of people lives have been "taken". Even the innocent people's lives got involved in car accident indirectly, which mean the careless driver can cause death to the pedestrian along the road.

There are lot of ways how to prevent the rate of road accidents and road casualties, such as enforcing the law, speed limits not over 90km/h, and so on.So, the authority should take an initiative on every aspects to overcome the rate of road accidents and road casualties from keep on rising.

Road Accidents in Malaysia

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.