ROAD ACCIDENT

HOW TO CURB ROAD ACCIDENT

By Kevin Davidson Dé Joseph Jee Chee Liong

In modern country, road is the basic facility needed for the functioning of a country or area. A road is known as an open way for travel or transportation. A city with high density of populations will need more roads in order to cope with congestion. However, since the appearance of the roads, the local authority was compelled to seek for a better way to curb the road accident from getting increase. Based on the survey runs by the Road Transport Department of Malaysia indicates that the death toll just within Malaysia has noted at the highest rate. Owing to the aforementioned, many drastic solutions have been taken to overcome the accident from recurring. However, those solutions were forfeited as the road accident still in an active state.

In fact, a suitable remedy for the problem needs a lot of effort and proper plan in order to achieve better. Everything needs to begin from the root as they are many unforeseen factors that contribute to road accident. It is crucial for us to behave well while driving, be tolerant and patient at all the time. Everyone should have cultivate these habits and adopt them as part of good virtue. Let’s recall the current situation, you may probably find out most accident case happened due to the driver’s fault. The road users nowadays are seriously lack of toleration as they never give way to others, on contrary, they attempt to speed up their vehicle and overtake the cars around them. Such an irrational attitude may increase the risk of getting fatal accident. Obviously, a little amendment on the personal attitude will affect the whole, thus reducing the rate of road accidents. Besides, road users should actively participate in any relating programme organized by the Road Transport Department as part of self-education or to alert themselves about the ways of being an obedient driver.

Basically, family education is the first to be accounted in curbing the road accident from prevailing. Parents nowadays are over emphasizing on academic education that they often neglected road safety. As you can see, the school children possess very little knowledge about road safety. As a result, they become the vulnerable group in this case. Although some awareness campaign has been organized in some secondary schools, but most of them take it as part of game instead of understanding its real objective. Therefore, it is crucially needed for a parent to educate their children about road safety since they are young. Pre-education is always effective in shaping out a generation with high virtue. To achieve this, parents should be the role model for their children by driving carefully or always obey to the traffic rules. This is said to be the most effective way in educating children about road safety. In the other hand, parents may explain every action involve while driving a car to their children in order to stimulate the children’s mind in conjunction with the real situation. This is the best way to make them into a comprehensible state. With this proper step, probably a grown out child will be reformed and be a good, tolerant as well as a patient driver. Other than that, parents should allow their children to expose themselves to various materials about road accident. For instant like news article, internet news, or any documentary videos that are related to accident case. However, parents should accompany their children and take the opportunity available to give explanation based on the scene they are watching at. This is due to most of the accident scene tends to be violent or gory, it is afraid that those scenario will interfere young children’s feeling. But with a proper explanation from their parents, it will be something educational to them.

Parents are not the sole party to be blamed; school does play an important role in reducing accident case happen around the school area. In Malaysia, a special law has been set to protect the school pupils or students. According to the law, any accident take place in within the school area, the drivers should be responsible for the whole even though the accident was caused by the reckless students. In fact, government should view on a more sensible way before released the law. Such an act does not help at all but elevate the situation. This is because students may become more arrogant that they eventually ignore the cars around them whilst crossing the road. As suggested, school should arise more awareness campaigns and try not to restrict the age group. Moreover, it is necessary to hold seminar from time to time or organizing some quizzes about road safety in order to give a deeper impression among the students. By doing so, they will know better about the do’s and don’ts while accessing the road.

To make the effort even more efficient, the society should take part in running some activities to arise the public awareness about road accident. The leader of the local council is urged to seek for more solutions towards the problem. Currently, the infrastructure in some areas is still in bad condition where roads are not properly constructed. A bumpy or jagged road is the main factor that leads to the increment of road accident. Thus, the local authority should take up the rapid step in maintaining the road. In addition, some urban towns are lack of overcrossing. Imagine a busy road without overcrossing; pedestrians have to risk their lives crossing the road. This is the main subject that the local council should take into consideration and bring it to the parliament. As the remedy, they should construct more overcrossings in areas with dense transportations. Traffic lights should be monitor constantly to ensure its stability and functionality. Meanwhile, the collaboration from the public is always the best way to solve any traffic problem. They should report any faulty found in the roads either to the Road Transport Department or Traffic Police Department. A persistent complaint will certainly improve the road condition, thus cut off the accident rates.

Actually, dealing with political matters is not the only job for the government. They too need to deal with various problems arose by its nation. Presently, government is struggling in maintaining the country economic and politics. But they are unaware of the road accidents are on increase. Frankly speaking, they did mention about ways to curb the problem from recurring, yet, there are no proper solutions carry out right this moment. It seems like they are in two minds whether the matters are under their control. Hence, the government should have focus more in road accidents. This does not mean they will have to ignore the job they supposed to do, but a little effort will be sufficient to lighten the current situation.

In a nutshell, the collaboration from all parties is crucially needed to eliminate the accident case from getting worse. Family education, school awareness campaign as well as public cooperation are the three major remedies which can effectively reduce the death toll of road accidents. Remember that self-discipline is still the thing to consider at first hand, without self-discipline, it’s barely hard to bring every rules and laws into effective state.

(1,213 words)