652 Heavy Vehicle Accidents Recorded, Weigh-in Motion System Coming Soon

In the first quarter of this year, 652 accidents involving heavy vehicles were reported nationwide.

This was revealed by Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Hasbi Habibollah during a verbal session in the Dewan Rakyat today in response to a question from Ledang MP Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh regarding the statistics and causes of accidents involving heavy vehicles for the first quarter of the year.

The deputy minister continued that out of the 652 cases, there were 287 fatalities, 95 serious injuries, and 270 minor injuries. The causes of these accidents include driver negligence such as falling asleep at the wheel, speeding, overloading vehicles, and poor vehicle maintenance.

He further added that actions being taken to curb this matter include intensifying enforcement activities by the Road Transport Department (JPJ), particularly regarding vehicle load limits and speed limits for heavy vehicles.

In addition to operating 53 enforcement stations nationwide, the JPJ has also been equipped with 75 portable weighing devices for enforcement purposes.

Moving forward, the Ministry of Transport, in collaboration with the Public Works Ministry (KKR), is in the final stages of developing the 'High Speed - Weigh in Motion' (HS-WIM) system, which will enable real-time or automatic enforcement of heavy vehicles without requiring them to stop for weighing, thereby reducing the dependency on a large number of enforcement personnel.

Hasbi also added that last year, a total of 45,015 summonses were issued for hazardous load violations meanwhile up until April this year, 9,214 summonses have been issued.