(Seeing a dead body on the highway was not something I had in mind for my weekend entertainment. Image source: http://thezeph.wordpress.com)
I talked about it almost 2 years ago…
And it finally happened last week as I was driving along LDP on a Saturday afternoon after a meeting with a friend and realised that there was a heavy traffic jam. From afar, we can see the fast lane was blocked and the traffic moved from 3 lanes to 2 lanes. A police car was parked in the fast lane.
We saw a couple of men behind the police car, measuring something. As we were crawled along, we saw a pair of legs on the ground in front of the police car. We drove further and saw a young man – looked like an Indonesian – on the ground with a bloody face and was not moving at all.
He was dead.
Along both sides of the highway, there was a huge crowd of Indonesians standing and watching the dead body. Perhaps it was their family member; perhaps it was their friend or working colleague.
But it was too late – the young man was dead and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
And yet, this is unlikely to be the end of the story as I realised later – another idiot was waiting in the middle to cross the busy highway (he had managed to cross one part of the highway and got stuck in the middle, waiting to cross the other part).
In the meantime, Malay Mail reports this:-
A pair of lovers was killed when the car they were travelling in crashed into a road divider at Km21.7 Kesas Expressway at 5.30am today.
Selangor traffic and public order chief Supt Che Hussin Omar said Ng Kai Seng and girlfriend Wong Pao Wen, both 19, died of head injuries at the scene.
“They were returning home to Bukit Tinggi from Kuala Lumpur in a Toyota Vios when the car skidded, spun and crashed into the road divider.
”The impact sent them crashing onto the road. The car landed about 200 metres away from the spot it crashed into a road divider at Km21.7.”
Che Hussin said initial investigation showed that the driver was speeding above the permitted speed limit.
Their remains were sent to Tengku Ampuan Rahimah Hospital for a post-mortem. Police also took blood samples to test the alcohol level
Speeding over the permitted speed limit is one thing (the speed limit is lower than the speed limit for North-South Highway) but has the problems facing the highway itself been rectified?
In 2007, I wrote this:-
For anyone who uses the Kesas, look closely at the divider – it goes up and down. It is the same case on the road.
You are virtually driving up a small slope, then down and sometimes the “up and down” is so sudden that you are bouncing through the air.
There is no warning at all for motorist to slow down or to watch out for sudden ups and downs other than the sporadic speed limit signboard.
It is no wonder that when it rains heavily, the volume of water stagnant on the road is also heavy.
So, in other words, you can’t drive that fast in Kesas
We are not really sure whether Ng Kai Seng has been speeding but if you think about it, driving at 81 km/h (Kesas has a speed limit of 80 km/h) is nothing too great compared to driving at 110 km/h along the North-South Highway.
But road conditions (and perhaps the weather) have been bad; it does not really need Ng Kai Seng to be flying in his Vios to get in serious trouble.
And from personal experience, Kesas can be very tricky at higher speed but here is the sickening part to the whole affair – “driving above the speed limit” aside, of course, we are paying through our noses for the toll for such a lousy and poorly constructed highway.