The rate of accidents and accident-related deaths in Indonesia, a country with a population of about 237.6 million, is high partly because of the rapid increase in the number of vehicle production, inappropriate road infrastructure, the lack of vehicle worthiness and insufficient awareness of safety procedures.
To improve the country`s transportation conditions, the government lunched the program and expected to achieve the goal in ten years. "The target will be achieved by implementing a national general plan for traffic safety (RUNK LLAJ) which will involve relevant parties. The implementation of its action plan will need 10 years or a decade," Director of Land Transportation Safety at the Transportation Ministry Hotma Simanjutak said recently.
The ten-year implementation of the program is thus dubbed as a safety decade, and on Monday Vice President Boediono launched the Road Safety Decade 2011-2020, hoping it could keep down the number of road accidents in the country.
Indonesia is among the countries having the high number of road accidents, he said during the launch of the campaign at the vice presidential office here. The plan is in line with the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 which is a follow-up to UN Resolution No. 64/255 dated March 2, 2010.
Vice President Boediono said that every year nearly 60 thousand people were killed in road accidents in the country. Therefore, the number of deaths and injuries in road accidents must be kept down, he said.
"Of course, the main target of the campaign is to lower the number of fatalities," he said. To make thing worse, the road accidents mostly befell those of productive age who were supposed to contribute to the country`s progress, he said.
"In my view, the problem is so serious that we must handle it seriously. The causes of road accidents vary. They can be the poor condition of roads, motorcycles and cars which are not roadworthy. But it seems that the biggest cause is human factor," he said.
It was the road users themselves who would eventually determine road safety and thus, it was very imperative to control motorists` behavior, he said.
Data from the National Police show 31,186 people were killed in road accidents in the country last year, meaning that an average of 84 people per day or 3-4 people per hour were killed in road accidents.
"Ironically, most of the road accidents involved motorcyclists and 67 percent of them were in their productive age. State losses from the road accidents are projected to reach 2.9-3.1 percent of the gross domestic product, an equivalent of Rp205-220 trillion," Hotma Simanjutak said.
The higher rate of accidents involving motorcyclists is also attributable to the higher growth of motor vehicle production which reached more than 8 million units as compared to that of car production which was about 800 thousand per annum.
Industry Minister MS Hidayat said the production of cars and motorcycles this year was estimated at 800 thousands and 8 million respectively.
Hidayat said that unluckily, the increase in the vehicle production was not followed by improvement of road infrastructure which eventually boosts the rate of road accidents. After all, he said it was impossible to reduce the number of vehicle production.
"It is impossible to cut down the number of production. Even, it is predicted that car production would reach one million units in 2013 and motor vehicles 10 million units. So, the only way is to increase our exports and distribution to cities outside the crowded Java," the industry minister said.
Hidayat also responded to the vice president`s request that arrangement must also be made with regard to vehicle production. He said that the vice president wanted an arrangement where vehicle distribution was not concentrated in Jakarta and its satellite towns of Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bakasi.
According to Vice President Boediono, the number of traffic accidents in Indonesia must be reduced and for this purpose, a comprehensive short and long term arrangement is needed. He said that clear traffic signs and regulations were needed owning to the fact that public spaces were limited.
"No matter what conditions we are facing, we have to have an arrangement regarding the limited public spaces in order to serve public interest," the vice president said.
And what all the public need is awareness of the importance of observing traffic safety regulations. He said that the government had issued a number of regulations related to traffic safety but the regulations were not enough without motorists` awareness about traffic safety.
Therefore, the vice president said he highly supported the action plan for traffic safety which would focus on promoting motorists` awareness of traffic safety.
"I hope for concrete steps to eventually reduce the risk of traffic accidents caused by human error," he said. ***
Reporter: By Andi Abdussalam
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