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Bernama -June 11, 2020 3:22 PM
PORT DICKSON: A 71-year-old man was fined RM6,000 in lieu of six months’ jail by the Magistrate’s Court here today for drink driving.
Magistrate Siti Huzaifah Abd Talib meted the sentence on Syed Mahmood Syed Nazimuddin after he pleaded guilty to the charge.
Syed Mahmood was charged with driving a Mercedes Benz car while under the influence of alcohol, with a blood alcohol content reading of 211mg per 100ml which is above the permitted level of 80mg per 100ml, when stopped at Jalan Kampung Baru Sirusa here at 11.05pm on June 6.
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Excerpts:
As for the category of “drunk/drugs”, it is actually the last of the 17 categories listed, accounting for just 20 of the 18,705 fatal road accidents recorded during the 2016-2018 period.
Thursday, 11 Jun 2020 07:18 AM MYT
BY IDA LIM
1. How many deaths did drink driving accidents cause in recent years?
From the Transport Ministry’s November 13, 2018 written Parliamentary reply to Tumpat MP Datuk Che Abdullah Mat Nawi, police figures showed that the number of persons who died due to drink driving accidents were 49 (2010), 33 (2011), before going up markedly to 136 (2012) and continuing on a general upward trend of 207 (2013), 193 (2014), 229 (2015) and 237 (2016).
Since the peak of 237 deaths in 2016, the number has fallen to 58 in 2017 and 54 in 2018, according to a Transport Ministry presentation carried on the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific’s (UNESCAP) website.
For the eight-year period from 2011 to 2018, a total of 1,147 people lost their lives in drink driving accidents in Malaysia, based on these figures.
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From the same Transport Ministry data, drink driving accidents were also shown to have resulted in 539 individuals being seriously injured from 2011 to 2018, and 595 suffering minor injuries during the same eight-year period. (The figures for 2010 were omitted in Malay Mail’s tally due to possible discrepancies in the figures provided by the Transport Ministry.)
In other words, around 2,281 individuals were affected by drink driving accidents in Malaysia from 2011 to 2018, with about half of them dying and about half of them either suffering serious or minor injuries.
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2. It’s part of a bigger problem
Transport accidents are actually a top killer of Malaysians in Malaysia, where roughly around one million more vehicles have been added every year since 2006.
According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia’s (DOSM) latest data released in October 2019, a total of 168,168 deaths were recorded in Malaysia in 2017 and 172,031 deaths in 2018.
When looking at just the medically-certified deaths, DOSM’s figures show that transport accidents are the fourth biggest cause of such deaths, at 4,499 or 4.6 per cent of the 97,440 deaths in 2017, and at 4,391 or 3.7 per cent of the 117,387 deaths in 2018. (The top three causes for these two years were ischaemic heart diseases, pneumonia, cerebrovascular diseases, while the fifth biggest cause is chronic lower respiratory diseases.)
Based on the police’s official statistics for the annual number of deaths caused by road accidents for the period 2003 to 2019, the annual figures have generally hovered above 6,200 deaths, except for a peak in 2016 at 7,152 deaths.
The number of deaths recorded every year as a result of road accidents in Malaysia has since decreased from the 2016 peak to 6,740 deaths in 2017, 6,284 (2018) and 6,167 (2019).
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3. More than one thing to blame
It is clear that transport accidents in general is a top cause of medically-certified deaths in Malaysia annually, and that police statistics show more than 6,000 persons dying every year from road accidents.
But when it comes to drink driving specifically, it is not identified as a top cause of fatal road accidents, based on official data published on the Malaysian government’s open data portal data.gov.my.
In fact, police statistics show that the top five causes for fatal road accidents during the 2016-2018 period are: vehicles that crashed on their own (6,056 fatal road accidents), eating into other lanes but not while overtaking two or more than two vehicles (1,958), not seeing or noticing animals, objects or other vehicles in front or beside the vehicle in the same direction (1,950), attempts to overtake or switch lanes (1,931), and being careless when entering or exiting slip road junctions (1,926).
The top sixth to tenth cause during the same period are staying close to another vehicle (1,025), U-turns, turning back the vehicle or crossings (769), going against the traffic flow (708), not following traffic lights (535), or pedestrians being careless while crossing the road (520).
As for the category of “drunk/drugs”, it is actually the last of the 17 categories listed, accounting for just 20 of the 18,705 fatal road accidents recorded during the 2016-2018 period.
This places the category of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs below other categories during the 2016-2018 period, such as for racing/zig zag (22), others (112), sudden stopping of vehicles (158), unknown causes (232), being careless while reversing (382), and daydreaming/tired/sleepy (401).
For the whole article:
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2020/06/11/malaysias-drink-driving-problem-how-big-is-it-what-the-numbers-actually-say/1874350
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weehingthong 