Highway patrol blamed for pileup

After studying printed media accounts and watching television reports on the multiple pileup on the Jagorawi freeway (Nov. 17), we come to the conclusion that highway patrol personnel are to blame for the accident.

As already regulated, no motor vehicle is allowed to stop in lanes 1, 2 and 3 of a freeway, because the cars behind will certainly slam into it, even at a distance away of 100 meters (under full alert, drivers must put on the brakes at least 70 m away, as indicated by Jakarta Police chief spokesman Chief Comr. Tjiptono)

Based on this fact, highway patrol officers should have signaled all passing vehicles to slow down at least 300 meters away from the point where they had to stop. This standard operation procedure is also applied on motorways in Germany.

This traffic engineering weakness shows that highway patrol personnel still need to upgrade their knowledge. Therefore, the police should not blame the drivers in the accident, who have suffered due to the pileup that killed six people and severely injured others.

We hope that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will not be misled by police authorities, who are reluctant to admit their own mistake.

ILHAMY ELIAS Chairman, Indonesian Environmental Management and Information Center Jakarta