OCT 4 — The Hari Raya festivities are generally over. All the hometowns have been visited, all the lemang eaten, cakes consumed. So all that’s left for us to do now is sort through the mess of dead bodies that have accumulated on our roads over that short period.
At 261 deaths, this year’s Ops Sikap recorded the second highest number of road fatalities since the annual enforcement campaign was started in 2001. Over a two-week period, an average of 18 people lost their lives on roads every day.
Almost nine years in, road fatalities have not gone down by anything further than statistical anomaly. It’s come to the point where you wonder if the whole exercise really is about reducing accidents and fatalities or just an easy way to rack up the a large portion of the year’s summonses quota in a short span of time.
I’m not sure where the authorities got the idea that flooding the roads with policemen and policemen cut-outs across a fortnight would net any form of positive results when enforcement is virtually absent the other 350 days of the year. Because all this actually does is the exact opposite.
Instead of increasing the visibility of enforcement, it highlights the lack of it during the rest of the time. All it takes is a simple 30-minute drive along our roads and the impunity with which Malaysians flout traffic regulations is laid bare for all to see.
Beyond the jackasses trying to reverse a kilometre back up a highway (where people are driving at well over a hundred, mind), you’ll also meet motorcyclists who are unwilling to mess up their stylish hairstyles by plonking a helmet over it. Jalan Sehala may as well be a street name, since no one actually bothers to do as it says.
Any place where it’s physically possible to turn a car around is miraculously transformed into a U-turn, never mind the silly sign that says you’re not supposed to do exactly that. And seatbelts? Who would want to wrinkle that shirt they spent so much time ironing just this morning?
Although the authorities don’t seem to realise it yet, Malaysians have long discovered the fallacy of policing. A police force works on the power of illusion. Consider that there are less 100,000 of them policing a population of around 27 million in Malaysia. That’s one copper for every 270 of us. And only if you include all the ones who never step out of their offices.
Still, it’s not a situation that’s unique to Malaysia. Police forces the world over are vastly outnumbered by the population that they are tasked to police. That’s why the power of the police over the populace is largely illusory. What can one man really do if 270 decide to ignore him?
The trick to maintaining this illusion is to convince the 270 into thinking this one solitary man is always around, always watching, always ready to nick them when they get up to no good. I suspect that’s why coppers have uniforms, so you can tell them apart from everybody else but not from each other.
But when this one man makes it a habit to be absent for practically the entire year, people forget he’s even there. So when he makes a show of actually being where he’s supposed to be, he can’t really blame the people for acting like he’s not even there because, for the most part, he never is.
If the authorities really do plan on making enforcement as part of the solution, then visible policing must be the norm rather than the exception. Otherwise there’s no illusion; no power; and most definitely no effect.
We also need to look at the bigger picture here. While we’re now flapping about how 18 people died every day Ops Sikap was in effect last month, the more pressing issue is 17 people died every day of 2008, Ops Sikap or no Ops Sikap. What does that tell you?
Although the media hams it up for the festive period, maybe because the juxtaposition of death and celebration makes for a more impactful message, there really is no significant difference in the number of road fatalities at other times of the year. It’s not extra bad during Raya; it’s just that we tell you more about it.
Whoever it is who’s in charge of improving road safety has a massive task ahead of them. Firstly to get all the agencies involved — from enforcement to education — to start doing their jobs properly, and then to get them all to start moving in the same direction. Make it a practice, not a blitz.
As for the rest of us, I think it’s safe to assume that the above will not be happening soon, if it happens at all. No one is going to be looking out for you on the roads, so you damn well better start looking out for yourself.
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