EVERY year, 6,000 people die on Malaysian roads.
Disturbingly, 70 per cent of them are motorcycle riders, many of them young adults.
This is not only a moral problem for the country, but an economic one as well.
A death every 80 minutes calls for a serious rethink about road safety.
The three common factors in every death and injury on Malaysian roads are these: roads, vehicles and humans.
It is here that all those tasked with ensuring road safety must start.
There is the rethink of engineering for roads and vehicles, enforcement and education for humans.
Begin with roads.
Like it or not, not all our roads are engineered to world-class safety standards.
Road safety experts from Sweden to the Netherlands to Britain — where road safety rethink has happened — agree that road designs play a crucial role in reducing the carnage on the roads.
What is more, by minimising deaths and injuries, safer road designs would shrink productivity loss.
The link between road design and productivity is not as tenuous as many might think.
Then there is what is called the engineering treatment of road signs and markings to warn of bends, curves, speed limits and the like.
Building safe roads is one thing, managing them is another.
The ubiquitous potholes tell us that our roads could be managed better.
Our vehicles, too, need to be reengineered for road safety.
China's Zhejiang Geely, the owner of Volvo, announced in 2020 that the Swedish brand would come installed with in-car cameras and devices to intervene against speeding, intoxication and distraction — three major causes of road deaths and injuries on Malaysian roads.
The idea is to let the car take control when the driver fails.
Zhejiang Geely, which owns 49.9 per cent of Proton Holdings Bhd, and DRB-Hicom Bhd must do the same for their stable of cars.
The Transport Ministry may want to make it mandatory for vehicle manufacturers to install such devices before they are allowed on our roads.
It may appear harsh, but remember, every 80 minutes policymakers take to consider making such a mandatory move, a precious life is lost.
Smart roads and vehicles do take much of the load off enforcement, our second point.
But it is still necessary, especially with the Transport Ministry's goal of halving road fatalities by 2030.
However, an old lament persists: the police and the Road Transport Department have neither the manpower nor the technology to raise enforcement to the level needed.
More money needs to head the way of enforcement. Education, our final point, is crucial if we want people to be safe on our roads.
Because it is about learning the rules of the road and human limitations. But it must start early, not wait until one gets behind the wheels or onto a motorcycle.
Studies show that it is most effective if road safety education begins in primary school. Not that we have not done this, but in true Malaysian fashion, it is on an on-again, off-again mode.
Starting early means allowing road safety rules to become second nature.
In the 1960s, school traffic games were a rage. But such an education was an extracurricular activity. There is nothing "extra" about road safety.
Road safety rethink would only happen if we begin to treat it just as any other safety issue.