TRANSPORT Minister Anthony Loke said he is appalled that people’s attitude towards road safety is unlike people’s fear of Covid-19. 

At the launch of a road safety campaign today ahead of the Lunar New Year weekend, Loke said more people die on the road than from Covid-19 in Malaysia. 

People are expected to clog the nation’s highways during the holiday.

Expressing concern over the increasing road crashes and deaths, he said a holistic approach to improving road safety is imperative to making roads safer for everyone. 

“Many people informed me that our campaign must take into account how we can provide more awareness that the threat of road crashes is bigger than Covid-19,” he was quoted as saying in his address.

The campaign was launched at the Dengkil rest area (northbound) on the North-South Expressway Central Link today. 

He said while the Covid-19 awareness campaign was successful, with people bombarded daily with a daily tally of infections and deaths for the past three years, deaths on the road are more numerous.

“But … people’s awareness of road crashes is not profound or deep-rooted like it is” for Covid-19, he said.

Data until August 2021 show that 70 out of 100 deaths on the road involve motorcyclists. – January 17, 2023.