The Star Malaysia

Pledge for road safety

Celebri­ties and cit­i­zens vow to ditch bad driv­ing habits on 09.09.09

- By SHAUN HO

SUN­GAI BU­LOH: For­mer F1 driver Alex Yoong pledged to not over­take from the left lane.

Singer Datuk Shar­i­fah Aini vowed to en­sure that all pas­sen­gers in her car wore seat­belts.

Pho­tog­ra­pher Kid Chan promised to be more pa­tient to­wards reck­less driv­ers and not be a re­ac­tive driver.

The three celebri­ties were among 184,102 Malaysians who pledged to ditch their bad driv­ing habits on the MU­FORS or “Malaysians Unite for Road Safety” web­site ( www.090909. org.my).

MU­FORS is a com­mu­nity project aimed at in­cul­cat­ing road safety aware­ness and re­duc­ing the num­ber of ac­ci­dents.

Those who made pledges are ex­pected to carry them out to­day, start­ing from 9am and end­ing at 9pm.

“We hope that this date will be the start­ing point for ev­ery­body to do their part in in­creas­ing road safety aware­ness,” said MU­FORS chair­per­son Noorizah Ab­dul Hamid at the of­fi­cial launch held at the Sun­gai Bu­loh Over­head Bridge Restau­rant yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Noorizah, an av­er­age of 18 deaths are recorded in Malaysia a day, due to road ac­ci­dents.

“Who is re­spon­si­ble for this wor­ry­ing fig­ure? We are al­ways point­ing fin­gers but we con­tinue to drive dan­ger­ously.”

She hoped that peo­ple would keep hon­our­ing their pledges af­ter to­day.

Works Min­is­ter Datuk Shaz­i­man Abu Mansor, who mooted the idea of broad­en­ing road safety aware­ness through in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion, said that ini­ti­at­ing the project was a timely move be­cause of high ac­ci­dent statis­tics.

“Now is the time to play a more proac­tive role in re­duc­ing road ac­ci­dents,” he said in his speech be­fore launch­ing the cam­paign.

The event was also at­tended by Deputy Trans­port Min­is­ter Datuk Ab­dul Rahim Basri, Fed­eral traf­fic po­lice chief Se­nior Asst Comm (II) Datuk Ab­dul Aziz Yu­sof, Road Safety Depart­ment di­rec­tor-gen­eral Datuk Suret Singh, and other guests.

On the Hari Raya ex­o­dus, Shaz­i­man said ten ac­ci­dent-prone sites along fed­eral roads have been up­graded to make them safer for mo­torists.

He said that toll con­ces­sion­aires will cope with the surge in the num­ber of ve­hi­cles by hav­ing stag­gered lanes for cash-pay­ing mo­torists.

?? ?? We pledge: Shaz­i­man (right) in­spect­ing a board of all the pledges made by the pub­lic to stop bad driv­ing habits at the Sun­gai Bu­loh Over­head Restau­rant. With him are Ab­dul Rahim (mid­dle) and Noorizah.
We pledge: Shaz­i­man (right) in­spect­ing a board of all the pledges made by the pub­lic to stop bad driv­ing habits at the Sun­gai Bu­loh Over­head Restau­rant. With him are Ab­dul Rahim (mid­dle) and Noorizah.

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