Yangon police will launch a program next year to pressure drivers to exercise the easiest, most beneficial habit imaginable – wearing seatbelts.
“Myanmar people need constant reminding,” Traffic Police Lt-Col Aung Ko Oo told Eleven this week.
Myanmar’s National Road Safety Council announced that the progam will begin on January 1, 2017. Under the new programme, police will fine drivers and passengers K30,000 ($23) if they are found not wearing seatbelts while on the road.
At the end of September, the council also announced a seatbelt education campaign for the final two months of 2016. The campaign will combat the perception among Yangon drivers that wearing a seatbelt is “extra work” and that “there is not so much difference between wearing and not wearing one”, as one driver put it to Myanmar Business Today last year.
There are actually a few differences between wearing and not wearing a seatbelt, but K30,000 may be the key difference we were missing until now.
