Drivers lack safety awareness

Drivers lack safety awareness

JAKARTA (JP): Lack of safety awareness is the main cause of
road accidents, a study has found.

Speeding caused most accidents on toll roads, particularly the
Jakarta-Cikampek turnpike, Ministry of Public Works researchers
said yesterday.

On non-toll roads, lack of discipline was the largest cause of
accidents which mostly killed motorcyclists and pedestrians,
members of the Ministry's Institute of Road Engineering said.

"This is typical of city and inter-city roads elsewhere in
Asia," Hikmat Iskandar, one of the researchers, said during a
break at a five-day road safety workshop which ends Friday.

Police records show Indonesia has had at least 10,000 road
deaths annually, and many more injuries, over the past 10 years.

Hikmat said most accidents on the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road
involved single vehicles, particularly small trucks.

"They speed above the limit of 100 kilometers per hour," he
said.

Another researcher, Poernomosidhi Poerwo, said road users were
yet to learn about what activities were allowed on different
types of road.

"For instance, it is dangerous to load and unload construction
material on the side of an artery road," Poernomosidhi said.

The Institute and the Swedish International Development Agency
is organizing the workshop.

Sweden's ambassador Mikael Lindstrom said the workshop aimed
to share Sweden's road safety experience. Sweden has one of the
world's best road accident records based on a ratio comparing the
number of accidents to the number of vehicles a country has.

A representative from Swedish National Road Consulting AB,
Karl-Lennart Bang, said educating road users and builders to have
a sense of responsibility about the safety of fellow road users
was a long process.

"Police enforcement is very important," he said.

The researchers said although wearing helmets was mandatory,
most motorcyclists did not wear them properly.

The quality of helmets was also sub-standard, Poernomosidhi
said.

The researchers said many roads were built not taking safety
into account.

Poernomosidhi said corruption was a possible reason behind the
building of poor quality roads.

"But what is definite is that we lack discipline in following
standard procedures," Poernomosidhi said.

For example, road projects were not adequately equipped with
temporary traffic signs warning road users, he said. (anr)