accidents, accidents, accidents

sigh… so many accidents happened during the festive break. the latest one where 14 people died between a collision of an express bus and school bus shocked everyone. now what was the cause of the accident? as usual, speculation abound. one of them is that the driver of the express bus might be speeding. he could have speed so fast that he collided into the on-coming school bus, smashing one side of it, killing more than 10 people. but of course some people might be saying he is tired or sleepy, didn’t notice the on coming school bus. that may be so but if he was only tired and not driving at high speed, how could he had smashed up the school bus so badly? i’m sure it was speeding.

well, severa days back when i blog on accidents during festive occasion, i made a comment that speeding is one of the main reason of accidents. some disagree with me of course, like sudo nim, who pointed out to me that there is no speed limit in germany, yet the accidents rate are low. well, this time sudo nim again pointed out to me this letter from malaysiakini, where the writer questioned why aren’t we learning from the aussies. according to him, in australia, speed enforcement has not saved lives.

hmm… well then what? what to do? on one hand we have people saying speeding cause accidents, on the other hand, some people want speed limit to be raised (on highway) so that accidents might not happen. confuse eh? even our ayo-yo samy velu minister sounds confuse when he gave the go ahead to increase the speed limit on certain highways from 110kph to 120kph next year. he said:

“It (the speed limit) has nothing to do with accidents. Even with the 110kph speed limit, people are still driving at 120kph and 130kph and more. This increase (in the speed limit) will not make any difference,”

if so, then why the increase? did he think that raising the speed limit will not cause more fatal accidents? but didin’t he said there’s no difference?

hmm… before i got further confused, back to the bus drivers and accidents. in the malay mail dated 2 dec. there was a headline that goes ‘kiasu attitude of bus drivers kills’. i would tend to agree with the writer here. i took the mini bus quite often and at times i notice the mini bus drivers are competing with each other to see who can drive faster! scary! well, our chief minister, dr koh had proposed to create a sms line to report dangerous driving. if there is, i sure would be ‘smsing’ like mad while clinging for dear life while in the bus! 🙂

ok before i wrap off, fo the sake of the philosophical (correst spelling?) wits0 and the deep thinking dreamy guy, here is a link for you to slowy browse through, where it says that human error is the sole cause of 57% of accidents.