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Highway 101: Stubborn of the Stubborn

Some still don’t get it, don’t they?

Let’s recap something that was highlighted way before the holidays:-

Traffic offenders will no longer be given discounts on police summons fines beginning from Monday.

According to an internal directive issued to all traffic police divisions today, traffic offenders will have to pay the compound fines according to the computer generated summonses and appeals for discounts or waivers will no longer be entertained.

(Source)

The Road Transport Department (RTD) received 26,880 picture-attached complaints through the Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) from the public who managed to catch traffic offenders on mobile cameras.

(Source)

Despite this, there are stubborn “heroes” out there really, really thought that they could get away with it.

Perhaps they thought that they can get away with it since they have the inside “contact” to fix things up for them. Perhaps they thought no one was looking (or rather looking with a camera). Perhaps they underestimated the curse of the ordinary, law-abiding road users.

They are stubborn to the core. These are the people who don’t think twice of committing any traffic offence but make the loudest noise when the Government comes hard on the trouble makers and stands firm on blacklisting the repeated offenders.

The trip up North started really, really early at home. I woke up at 3 in the morning, my wife almost an hour later and by 4.30 in the morning, we were already hit the road with my son and my 80-year-old grandmother at the passenger seat.

Despite it being the first day of Raya, we were confident of a smooth journey up North (the real traffic jam would have started days before the first day of Raya). True to my instinct, travel was indeed smooth – the R&R was full packed as usual – and before long, we reached our destinations in time for a hot thosai and a kurang manis teh tarik (perfect breakfast after a long trip).

Kudos to PLUS and the police for managing the traffic for the holidays – it was not something easy to do.

And another…

That very night, we decided to visit a relative in Bukit Mertajam and just when we reached the Juru, a small traffic jam started to form (there was an accident as we found out later).

Immediately, a couple of heroes started to cut into the emergency lanes and continued to speed on. I wonder what pushes ordinary drivers to suddenly turn into selfish, arrogant and indiscipline bastards and start abusing the emergency lane as a quick mean to cut queue over law-abiding road users. Sometimes I am simply speechless.

What if there was a major accident on the highway and emergency units had to use the emergency lane? There must be a good reason why the emergency lane is named “emergency” lane instead of “queue cutting” lane, right?

And another…

On the way back to the city on Sunday, traffic was not that bad – I guessed 99% of the drivers on the road well behaved.

At this point, one must also thank the police for strict enforcement throughout the journey. Despite that, we still had some stubborn drivers abusing the emergency lane but overall, quality of driving by the majority of highway users have improved a lot.

Surprisingly despite the higher number of cars on the road this time around, I found driving more relaxing and less tiring. If everyone follows the traffic rules, driving can indeed be a pleasant one.

Oh, by the way, rest assured that high-resolution photos of the “heroes” caught on camera will be duly handed over to JPJ for their further “action”.

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