Eid Holiday Travellers Can Utilise Contraflow, But Remain Vigilant

During the Eid holiday travel period, the government typically implements various traffic engineering schemes to ease vehicle congestion on major routes, particularly on the Trans-Java toll road.

Several schemes commonly employed include one-way systems and contraflow arrangements. These policies aim to facilitate traffic flow, which typically increases significantly approaching the holiday period.

Jusri Pulubuhu, founder of Jakarta Defensive Driving Consulting, stated that holiday travellers should understand and properly utilise such traffic engineering schemes.

In simple terms, contraflow is a traffic management arrangement that temporarily utilises lanes from the opposite direction to accommodate vehicles experiencing congestion. Usually, one lane from the less-congested direction is temporarily diverted to increase capacity on the congested route.

Greater Risk

Whilst helping to facilitate traffic flow, Jusri cautioned that drivers must remain more vigilant when using contraflow lanes.

According to Jusri, the accident risk on such lanes is relatively higher compared to normal lanes.

“On such lanes, the risk of head-on collisions—often referred to as ‘goat-butting’ collisions—is quite significant, in addition to the risk of being struck from behind,” said Jusri.

He explained that this condition occurs because vehicles using contraflow lanes are positioned very close to traffic flowing in the opposite direction.

Given such conditions, drivers must maintain greater focus as vehicle positions are separated from oncoming traffic only by temporary barriers.

For this reason, drivers are advised to maintain speed control, concentrate on road conditions, and maintain safe distance from other vehicles.

“Therefore, when using contraflow lanes, drivers must exercise extra vigilance,” said Jusri.