Driving skills on toll roads still poor: Observers

JAKARTA (JP): Sixteen years after Jakarta's first toll road opened many drivers are still unaware of proper traffic behavior, experts said Saturday.

Traffic researcher Agus Bari Sailendra from the Ministry of Public Works' institute of road engineering said this was evident because 70 percent of toll road accidents involved no other vehicles and accidents in which cars hit the vehicle in front of them.

Agus said many drivers still could not estimate things like speed and wheel pressure.

Writer Willy Dreeskandar from paper Otomotif said drivers still violated basic rules like driving slowly in the right lane.

"These drivers will not move to the left, even though other cars have sounded their horns repeatedly, until patrol officers tell them to," Willy said.

Agus said he did not have exact figures but said on average there were 10,000 fatal accidents in Indonesia a year.

"A relatively small number or about 100 happen on toll roads," he said.

"But from the pattern of accidents, awareness of driving on toll roads is still low," Agus said.

On Thursday eight people died, including a two-year-old, when their van burst into flames on the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road. One of the survivors died the next day.

Also on Friday five people were injured in seven accidents involving 14 cars on the Jagorawi toll road. But drivers said heavy rain and poor vision caused the accidents.

"From the average number of accidents, 70 percent can be attributed to drivers, 20 percent to road conditions and the rest to natural causes," Agus said.

In the Cikampek accident the drive shaft of the vehicle snapped, scraping against the asphalt and spreading sparks to the fuel tank.

The L 300 Mitsubishi van carrying 16 people was hired, but not from a formal rental company. It left Pancoran in South Jakarta and was going to Cirebon which is about 290 kilometers away.

All types

A patrol officer estimated the van was about 10 years old, but Agus said toll road accidents involved "all types of cars, new and old, and luxury sedans."

Both said it was hard to control people who rented cars informally.

"The relationship is based only on trust," Willy said.

Agus said drivers were not used to maintaining a safe distance from the next car at a speed of 100 kilometers an hour.

A safe distance would be 100 meters, he said.

If the distance is too close the driver can easily crash into the car in front if it suddenly brakes.

"It takes just two seconds and the driver (at the back) would not even have time to recover from shock and apply brakes in time," Agus said.

Often tires burst because the air pressure is wrong for high- speed freeway driving, he said.

The 50-kilometer Jagorawi toll road was opened in 1978, while the Cikampek-Jakarta road, which is 72 kilometers long, opened in 1987. (anr/11)