EVERY so often, news breaks of a runaway truck or bus crashing into traffic, and usually, the lorry driver escapes unhurt.
Perhaps the mantra "the lorry driver escapes unhurt" has become the byword that transport operators live by, resulting in little concern for the safety of others.
When we say "escaped unhurt," this usually means both physically and financially. With fines ranging from a paltry few hundred to a few thousand ringgit, transport company owners seem unfazed by the weak arm of the law.
While I have no intimate knowledge of the day-to-day operations of transport and logistics companies, as a collective, commercial transporters likely ply hundreds of thousands of kilometers daily on Malaysian roads.
They are the biggest beneficiaries of the country's rather good road network.
With so many ringgit at stake every day, they have the financial motivation to ensure that their fleet works well and minimises downtime. At the very least, they should make sure that their trucks and buses are serviceable and safe to drive.
Sure, there are bad apples in every industry, and there's no way to eliminate all of them. Short of putting live cameras inside every truck cab and recording every minute of every drive, we have to rely on the industry to self-regulate to a certain extent.
Self-regulation is a concept that can work only if the players take pride in themselves, uphold certain good principles, and can look at themselves in the mirror without shame.
However, self-regulation can backfire badly, as we have seen with the many problems that have plagued fabled aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which used to be the gold standard when it came to doing the right thing.
Once upon a time, Boeing management and engineers simply took huge pride in being one of the world's best engineering companies, and as long as they held on to that idea, Boeing always did the right thing.
If the transport and logistics industry is unable or unwilling to take on the duty of doing the right thing, then the alternative is intrusive law enforcement.
If at all possible, intrusive law enforcement should be avoided because it could lead to all sorts of terrible things, not least of which is more opportunities for bending the law and corrupting its officers.
As it stands, there are all sorts of technologies that can achieve total driver monitoring while they are on the job.
This seems to be a matter of regulation and cost to the transport operators, but what is more difficult is monitoring the safety standards practiced by the companies.
On many occasions, we see in news reports that these heavy vehicle crashes involve equipment failure, mostly brake failure. Once such a finding is finalided, the usual penalty for the company is a relatively small fine, and no one goes to jail.
Again, I am not a fan of incarceration, but if those responsible for safety cannot take up the mantle, then severe punishment must be used as a deterrent.
Just as financial crimes of companies can now personally implicate officers and directors, it's time that the road transport act is amended to allow for jail time for errant transport operators.
Jail time and monstrous fines are legal means to force companies that focus too much on profit to internalise social and governance costs into their books, and this should be seriously considered.
Listed companies will have to comply with Bursa Malaysia's requirement for reporting environment, social and governance (ESG) standards in 2025, and for them, accidents and safety failures would definitely ruin their ESG scores.
Most people think of ESG merely as a way to internalize environmental costs into a company's bottom line, but that is just one-third of what it aims to achieve.
Social and governance scores contribute two-thirds to the record, and accidents that cost human lives and disrupt families and communities must be included as bad social and governance practices.
Perhaps the government should consider implementing something similar to ESG scores even for non-listed transport and logistics companies.
This could be used as a way to reward them by adjusting the number of vehicle licences each company is qualified to own based on their ability to maintain them safely.
Clearly, if a company keeps hiring unqualified or poorly trained drivers, and many of their vehicles get involved in accidents due to poor maintenance, they are not capable of handling their current capacity.
Bad drivers may cost less to the company, but because we all know there's no such thing as a free lunch, it is society that is subsidizing bad corporate behaviors.
This applies to chemical companies that pollute our rivers and cause dry taps, or logging and mining companies that care more about money than future generations.
As economists and advocates would point out, ESG is just one way to normalize these external costs into the bottom line.
All those transport and logistics industry associations really need to buck up and take responsibility for encouraging their members to prioritise safety, unless they want the public to view their industry as one that cares only about profit and not much else.
The transport and logistics industry are among the biggest beneficiaries of the new internet economy as online retail continues to attract traders and customers.
We, as a country, cannot afford to allow transport and logistics operations to be run by companies and individuals that are not interested in safety.