Road safety begins with driver accountability

LETTER: For roughly two hours each day, i try to stay alert on the road, anticipate other motorists and avoid becoming somebody else's traffic report.

Yet despite my best efforts, 30 years behind the wheel have brought me a couple of accidents and a few speeding summonses.

What keeps me cautious is knowing that a serious mistake could affect my safety, my family and my livelihood.

I would rather keep earning a living than learn that lesson the hard way. Now consider commercial truck drivers who may spend 10 to 12 hours a day on the road.

If two hours demand so much attention from me, imagine the challenges they face, often while controlling vehicles weighing several tonnes.

The tragic accidents involving Federal Reserve Unit personnel and Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris students last year remain painful reminders of what can happen when road journeys end in disaster.

They also raise a fundamental question: are we ensuring that the people making decisions behind the wheel personally face the consequences of unsafe driving?

Once a journey begins, a driver decides whether to speed, overtake dangerously, keep a safe distance or obey traffic rules.

Employers can train drivers, set procedures and maintain vehicles, but cannot control every decision made on the road.

Enforcement, however, appears to focus more heavily on transport operators than individual drivers.

Operators must remain accountable for vehicle maintenance, valid documents, reasonable schedules and regulatory compliance.

Drivers, in turn, must drive responsibly, hold valid credentials and complete necessary pre-departure safety checks.

Responsibility belongs to both parties, but it must reflect what each can actually control.

Having spent many years in trucking, i know how difficult it can be to recruit and retain experienced drivers.

Shortages can make operators reluctant to act firmly against poor behaviour for fear of losing someone difficult to replace.

Where serious violations carry greater consequences for the employer than the driver, an individual may simply move to another company.

This is unfair to responsible operators and to the many professional drivers who work safely every day.

One practical improvement would be greater transparency of driving offence records.

Malaysia already has the KEJARA demerit system, yet employers have limited visibility of a prospective truck driver's relevant history.

Authorised transport operators should be able to review past and current KEJARA records before assigning someone to a heavy vehicle, with appropriate privacy safeguards.

Repeated serious violations should not disappear from an employer's view merely because the driver changes jobs.

A second measure would be a commercial driving permit linked to the employing transport company.

When a driver changes employers, the transition should be recorded and a new company-linked permit issued before the driver operates for the new company.

This must not become a mechanism for an existing employer to block a resignation. Its purpose is traceability and clear responsibility, not restricting employment mobility.

Together, these measures would help operators make informed recruitment decisions and remind drivers that their records matter throughout their careers.

The objective is not to punish every mistake or transfer all blame to drivers.

It is to ensure proportionate consequences for serious or repeated unsafe behaviour, while continuing to hold companies accountable for their own obligations.

Road safety improves when behaviour, responsibility and consequences are properly connected.