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Rails must guard, not kill
PETALING JAYA: Metal guardrails along highways should be of the right design and be properly constructed to prevent fatalities that can occur with them piercing through vehicles, the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety (Miros) said. Its direcor-general Prof Dr Ahmad Farhan Mohd Sadullah said ideally, concrete barriers should be used but said that might not be possible for every kilometre of road. “Where metal guardrails are used, their joints and the construction must be of the right design and build. “There must also be regular maintenance because of the wear and tear of the metal,” he said when contacted yesterday. He was asked to comment on the Sani Express bus accident on Dec 26 along the North-South Expressway near Ipoh where 10 passengers were killed, reportedly because a metal guardrail was dislodged and pierced through the bus. As for the case with the express bus, Dr Ahmad Farhan said the stretch of the North-South Expressway near Ipoh was new and had been built to comply with international safety requirements. “We will have to investigate exactly what happened in the Sani Express case,” he said. He said Miros’ crash reconstruction unit was compiling the impact data of the accident. “The unit was deployed to the scene of the crash and the team is preparing a report. We will submit a list of recommendations to the related agencies so that such incidents will not reoccur,” he said. Dr Ahmad Farhan said the unit needed to see how the vehicle, driver and the surrounding environment came together to bring about the crash. “The safety system of all three must be compatible as all three would have played a part in the crash – sleepiness of the driver, the structure of the bus, and the outside environment,” he said. Meanwhile, Dr Ahmad Farhan said crashes involving commercial vehicles needed to be addressed via the system approach. “This means addressing the company as a whole and not only micro-managing each individual cause only,” he said.
SOURCE THE STAR
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