While more and more Indonesians are capable of buying vehicles, the country’s roads and road safety infrastructure is failing to keep up, leading not only to massive traffic jams but also, as the World Health Organization noted in 2013, a disturbing increase in the number of traffic accidents and fatalities.
According to data from the Indonesian police, in 2016 there were 105,000 traffic accidents and around 25,000 fatalities occurring from those accidents. That works out to be about 2.8 deaths per hour on average.
The Ministry of Transportation mentioned the accident data in relation to a new road safety campaign, “Love Life, Reduce Speed” to make drivers more aware of their own role in preventing accidents.
Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi explained that the high accident fatality rates led to the government’s safety campaign and that they wanted to implement it before the upcoming Lebaran holiday in June, an especially dangerous time on Indonesia’s roads when millions of people make the trip back to their villages.
“It’s an extraordinary [number of accidents and fatalities] and we should be paying particular attention to how the number of accidents can be lowered through various improvements,” Budi said yesterday at the opening of National Safety Week 2017 yesterday as quoted by Republika.
Budi also mentioned data from the WHO that showed that the risk of fatal accidents increased by 20% when the vehicle involved was going over 60 km/h, which is why the safety campaign would focus on getting drivers to slow down.
The transport minister said the government also had a number of policy initiatives to limit vehicle speeds, including new regulations about speed limits in school zones and accident prone locations. He said there were also new policies to regulate the roadworthiness of public transport vehicles and their drivers.
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