Road Accident

One of your reasons to buy an expensive car is because of its credential safety features. Usually, most expensive luxury cars are equipped with state-of-the-Art gadgets that will keep the car occupants safe during crashes.

However, a late night out to celebrate the New Year Eve turned tragic when a Toyota Camry carrying five family members crashes with a Mercedes-Benz and crashed into a signboard pillar on the New Klang Valley Expressway.

It seemed that the luxury car cannot protect the car occupants from fatality once the car crashes into the fixed objects located besides the road.

The moral of the story is that, no matter what kind of cars that you drive, please drive carefully and obey the traffic rules.

Also, the local authority should have considered designing a more forgiving highways by ensuring that there are no fixed objects being installed along sides all highways in Malaysia. If there are fixed objects such as the signboard pillar, the authority should cover the signpost using crash cushions to reduce the likelihood of fatal accident from happening.

For further story of the tragic event, read HERE.

Toll Free Rides During Raya Celebration

As part of an initiative to encourage users travelling using their highways, the Kuala Lumpur-Karak Highway and the East Coast Expressway can drive toll free from September 18 to September 24 from midnight to 5am. According to this report, the toll-free hours are applicable to all classes of vehicles, including commercial vehicle. Users can saved up to RM29 in toll for a one-way trip using the East Coast Expressway.

I totally agree with the intention of the concessionaires of the Expressway, MTD, to introduce the toll-free initiative. However, the timing of the toll free period is quite misleading since there are not many vehicles travelling from midnight to 5 am except for commercial vehicles. The commercial vehicles will fully utilize the timing since it will be very beneficial to them for doing so. May be with the announcement of the toll-free period, more private vehicle users will start travelling from midnight till 5 am in the morning and that will introduce another set of problems such as increase in the rate of accidents. As reported somewhere else, the period which has high accident rate is from midnight till 5 am in the morning may be due to drivers fatigues, drowsiness etc.

I think, the concessionaires should decrease also toll rate during other off peak period in order to allow different categories of drives to travel at different time of the day and not necessarily from midnight till 5 am in the morning.

090909: Honouring Your Pledged

About 250,000 Malaysians are expected to honour their pledged today, from 9am till 9 pm, as part of the Malaysians Unite for Road Safety (Mufors) 090909 campaign organised by PLUS Expressway Berhad.


They made their pledges on how they can contribute towards reducing accidents and saving lives, and honouring these pledges on Wednesday, Sept 9, 2009, between 9am and 9pm. By honouring the pledged, it is the hope of the organizer of the campaign that these pledges will transform into a lifetime change.

Wish everybody a safe trip to wherever your destination.