each time there is a crash involving a lorry carrying workers, especially foreign workers, there will this clamour for this form of transportation to be banned. the latest crash was the one in which four foreign workers were killed after the lorry they were in crashed into the back of a stationary trailer in tuas in the early hours of the morning this month.
according to a new paper report, the accident prompted member of parliament halimah yacob to call it a tragedy waiting to happen. from my own observations of how fast these vehicles are being driven and the manner in which they are driven, i have always thought that it is a matter of time before an accident, in which lives will be lost, happens.
land transport authority (lta)'s ruling is that vehicles carrying workers cannot travel faster than 60km/h. there is a label on the lorry to indicate this speed limit and another label to indicate the maximum number of passengers it can carry. it is rare to come across such vehicles sticking to the limit laid down by lta.
actually, all these labels are quite confusing because they do not appear to be consistent but anyway, they are just a label. on goods (g plate) vehicles i have seen some displaying 60km and some 70km. yet, there are some that display both 60km and 70km. even on mini buses (p plate) , i see two different figures.
i have not made an attempt to count the number of passengers; what i do know is that sometimes when i am travelling at 80km/h on the expressway, i have been overtaken by these workers-carrying lorries.
the other night i was driving at about 60km along kranji way when something quite alarming happened. a lorry, carrying a full load of foreign workers, thundered past me along the narrow and dimly lit road. it must have been travelling in excess of 80km/h. could you imagine the consequences if another lorry or other vehicle had been speeding in the opposite direction.
what i am trying to put across is that it is not the type of transport that is causing workers to lose their life; it is the recklessness of the drivers that cause such things to happen.
i do not know if the apparently rare sight of the traffic police on our roads these days has anything to do with the change in driving habit. i get the impression that the wild, wild west is making a come-back. i read about night races organised along orchard road. in my own neighbourhood, i seem to hear more frequently modified cars roaring down the road.
nowadays, drivers do not just beat red light, they ignore it. all kinds of drivers are into it - bus drivers, lorry drivers, truck drivers, taxi drivers, woman drivers, elderly drivers and executive drivers. maybe because of the heavier volume of traffic on our roads, they do not want to wait for another minute or so for the change of lights.
