8 golden rules to observe on the road

1) plan your journey. if you are tired, sleepy, drunk or in an emotional state, postpone your journey;

2) adhere to speed limits;

3) give signals and observe rules when changing lanes; look at the side mirrors and rear view mirror;

4) comply with traffic rules at intersections, especially at traffic light junctions;

5) avoid tailgating;

6) observe safety guidelines when overtaking. never overtake when in doubt;

7) don’t jump queue or abuse emergency lanes; and,

8) avoid weaving through traffic.

well, as usual, come festive season, there is this hoo-haa about road fatalities, thus you can trust our good old ministry of transport to come up with some rules to observe when you balik kampung or vice versa. yes, those so called 8 golden rules are what our good transport minister, chan kong choy, appeal to you to observe during the festive season.

and being the good samaritian that he is, his ministry had decided to save you from cranning your neck, eyeing suspiciously at every trees, bushes or lamposts that you zoomed by in your car to look our for speed trap cameras – they decided to place speed trap cameras out in the open for you to spot them easily, and also name the places where the cameras would be. they had identified 101 accident prone areas throughtout the country where they will place the cameras, and according to the same report, it stated that the list (of where the cameras are) would be up at their road safety department’s website.

huh? which one? is it the panducermat.org website? i went there but see nothing. what about the road transport department (JPJ – jabatan pengangkutan jalan)? oh no, lagi teruk… cannot access the website at all!! so much so for government websites!

the transport minister also said that last year, despite the on-the-spot RM300 fine (remember how we blog and talk on it?), there were 17 fatalities recorded daily. for this year, he hope that the fatalities will reduce to….. 4. wow. mighty ambitious i see. from 17 to 4. well, i would be mighty happy if that ‘ambition’ of his can be fulfilled.

UPDATED
related link: the transport minister’s speech ‘let’s live the selamat culture‘.