Blaming Scarecrows For Bus Accidents

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Can the bus tragedy that killed 15 university students near Gerik, Perak, become a racial issue?
Lawyer Siti Kasim claims that Transport Minister Anthony Loke is being attacked by some Malays online for the horrific accident.
The reason it seems was that the victims are Malays, whom a Chinese minister failed to “take care of”.
“Have you forgotten the driver is Malay?” asked Siti.
This is the typical blame game to divert from real problems towards what are called “scarecrows” or “straw men” in American English.
Transport Minister Anthony LokeThese human figures, made of straw and dressed in hats and shirts, are convenient scapegoats who can't argue back.
Another ridiculous deflection is the higher education minister’s proposal to ban university students from night travel to enhance safety.
An equally weird diversion came from the PAS Penang chief, who called to postpone the Penang LRT project to upgrade the East-West highway from Gerik to Kelantan instead.
Of course, blaming race, the lack of sunlight or the Penang LRT are all missing the point.
Corrupt ‘kautim’ culture?
The real culprits are elsewhere. One is probably our “boleh kautim” culture, where some “coffee money” makes enforcers “close one eye” to broken rules.
For example, the bus that claimed the lives of 15 Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (Upsi) students had 21 traffic summonses. The driver himself had 18 summonses, of which 13 were for speeding.
How was this bus still allowed to operate? How was the driver’s commercial vehicle licence still valid?
After two horrific lorry accidents in Seremban in September 2024, Loke said the Road Transport Department had found that many long-distance bus drivers tested positive for drugs.
Bus accident in Ayer Keroh earlier this yearYet on May 3, a tanker lorry crashed into two vehicles near Batang Kali, Selangor. The driver tested positive for drugs and had a record of five drug offences and 32 traffic violations.
Why does this seem to be a repeated pattern? Many have long whispered that safety rules can be ignored if bribes are paid. Some recent court cases have confirmed this.
For example, in April 2025, the Malacca Sessions Court sentenced an RTD official to one year in jail for bribing other RTD officers not to act against lorry operators for overloading, which is a safety issue.
In July 2024, another RTD officer in Kedah was charged with taking RM42,100 in bribes to overlook rules broken by a lorry company.
Are these cases just the tip of the iceberg of a far deeper problem?
Free Malaysia Today quoted RTD director-general Aedy Fadly Ramli as saying this year, “I can’t say that the integrity of our senior officers and enforcement officers is satisfactory or something to be proud of.”
While Loke can announce new transport policies, he has no power over the police or MACC to curb “close one eye” corruption.
Maybe PAS Penang should instead call for a jihad against such corruption rather than trying to stop the Penang LRT project just because a DAP chief minister rules the state.
Road carnage
The lack of enforcement has led to road carnage. There were 652 accidents involving heavy vehicles (lorries and express buses) in the first quarter of 2024, of which 287 resulted in deaths.
Driver fatigue, overloading, and poor maintenance led to these accidents. All of these are supposed to be monitored by authorities.
For example, express buses travelling over 300km or four hours must, by law, have a second driver to prevent accidents caused by fatigue. But Penang RTD director Zulkifly Ismail said last year that this rule is often ignored.
Channel News Asia (CNA)’s investigation in May 2024 found that Malaysian express buses had many safety issues apart from speeding.
One passenger had to switch three seats before finding a working seat belt.
Drivers get tired driving up to 17 hours to earn more (drugs help keep them awake). They also don't want co-drivers because they must split their earnings in half.
There is also a shortage of bus drivers, so companies are willing to hire “bad apples”, like those with drug records.
But CNA also found bright spots. By law, long-distance buses are supposed to have a GPS.
SuperNice Express of Penang has a control room that monitors its fleet of over 100 buses 24 hours a day.
If a bus speeds at more than 100km/h for two minutes, an alarm will sound in the control room, and the team will warn the driver to slow down.
Speed limiting devices
As heavy vehicles are supposed to have GPS devices, RTD can check which ones are speeding. But are they doing it?
Loke announced that the operating permit of the bus company involved in the fatal crash in Gerik has been revoked. One reason is that it failed to activate the bus’s GPS.
This is the perennial problem in Malaysia: we have rules and systems, but they are hardly known, let alone enforced, until major accidents happen.
Now, Loke says the government is drafting a policy for mandatory speed limiters on heavy vehicles.
However, previous proposals for speed limiters have failed. In August 2016, then-MCA transport minister Liow Tiong Lai gave bus companies a one-year deadline to install speed limiters or face suspension.
One company was awarded monopoly rights to install speed limiters on lorries, but transport operators successfully blocked this.
After Loke’s latest proposal, Pan Malaysian Bus Operators Association president Ashfar Ali claimed that there is “no reliable speed limiter available on the market”.
In contrast, Malaysia Trucking Federation president Ng Koong Sinn said speed limiters should be widely adopted in heavy vehicles to enhance road safety nationwide.
Root causes
We sincerely hope that the epidemic of road deaths will finally end. One person dies every two hours in a road accident in Malaysia, official statistics show.
But we've become numb to numbers. So perhaps a description of the UPSI bus tragedy will have more impact.
Gerik Fire and Rescue Department chief Azizan Abdul Aziz told Sinar Harian that the operation in Gerik was the most heart-ripping he’d ever done.
“Corpses were strewn all over the drain and road divider. Some had limbs torn off,” he said.
Finally, let's remember that any new (or old) rules will be useless unless corruption and “tidak apa” (don't care) attitudes among enforcement agencies are stopped.
These are the root causes of our road carnage. Don't divert the discussion to fake scarecrows like the Penang LRT or the minister’s skin colour. - Mkini
ANDREW SIA is a veteran journalist who likes teh tarik khau kurang manis. You are welcome to give him ideas to brew at [email protected].
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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