Malaysian Drivers

I have been here in Malaysia for almost 7 years and the one thing I have had a hard time adjusting to are the drivers, I have never seen a more varied style of drivers in one place before. My perception was that Malaysians are insane, but it all works out somehow, then I looked up the numbers.

The statistics I found after a quick google:



Driving in Malaysia has its dangers - with a very high per capita fatality rate - 26 people per 100,000 are killed in traffic crashes. Each year there are about 6,300 fatal accidents.


Compared to Canada:


According to the Transportation Safety Board approximately 2800 to 2900 people are killed on Canadian roads each year.


The population is less in Malaysia, at 27 million than in Canada at 36 million. So my perception that there aren't that many accidents in Malaysia is way out, guess I just haven't seen many. One of the major reasons that you don't see accidents here is that ambulances rarely actually go to an accident, or the fire department, most of the time even the police don't go. In a lot of the accidents the injured are rushed to the hospital by taxi or private car. I have seen a few dead bodies on the road, usually there are a bunch of people standing around watching, this is apparently great entertainment.


Of all the road related fatalities in Malaysia the majority of deaths are of motorcyclists ( 4070 motorcycle deaths in 2009 alone! ). I wasn't surprised to find that motorcyclists were killed more often than car drivers/passengers, the actual number of motorcycle riders or passengers killed is 67% of all fatalities. 


I added a picture  I think it shows a few reasons why a lot of people are killed on motorcycles. For the record the majority of the bikes on the road are not what I would refer to as a motorcycle, but as scooters.

(I shamelessly stole these from the net, if any of them belong to you, let me know and Ill pull it)

Make no mistake, I could have taken all of these pictures in a single day easily, the number of scooters on the road here is staggering, in 2008 alone 541,080 scooters (<150cc) were sold in Malaysia, thats only one year! The main reason for the numbers is that scooters are inexpensive compared to cars, an average scooter sells for <RM7000 while the cheapest car sells for over RM30,000. Remember the average yearly salary is less than RM20,000.

Picture 1 shows the number of scooters on the road and this picture doesn't really show the full impact, when I find a better picture I'll upload it. In some areas there are so many scooters that they don't bother to stop for red lights, they just keep going, they know cars will stop. The Scooters here don't follow any road rules and often drive on the wrong side of the road, even on the freeways and highways.

Pictures 2, 6 and 9 show that Malaysians take a very different view about personal safety, even when it includes their children, notice in pictures 2 and 9 that the "Father" wears a helmet but the rest of the family goes without. One reason for this is that helmets are considered expensive and in some cases only worn to keep their hair dry when it rains.

Pictures 3,4,5 and 7 show the "Mat Rempit" ( loosely translates to Motorcycle Boy/Fan but I prefer "Organ Donor" unfortunately Muslims do not donate organs, its against the religion ). This has been on the rise for the past 10 or 15 years, the relative low cost of scooters and an increase in the petrol price have been considered the reasons for the increase. The major problem is not just that they are riding like crazy people, but they are turning to crime to fund their "hobby". The number of "Snatch thefts" in Malaysia has risen steadily in the last 20 years. A snatch theft is when a scooter ride past someone an snatches their bag or increasingly phones. (I have lost a phone to a snatch thief, Mom lost her bag and I have known many other people that have been victims). There have been a number of deaths in the last few years because of Snatch thefts, mainly the woman/man is knocked down by the scooter.

Picture 8 is a shot of the "Roti man" (Roti means "Bread"), you'll see these roti men in all housing areas and they sell bread, sweets, chips and other small items. In that picture the roti man is almost finished, when they start their day, you can barely see the rider.

Most Malaysians that don't ride scooters pay very little attention to them, which is one of the reasons that so many scooters get hit by cars. In a lot of cases drivers are afraid of scooters, you hear of people being bullied or attacked by scooter riders all the time, in some cases the scooters will force the drivers to stop.

I think the biggest issue is that the scooters usually drive slow even on the freeway and this can be very scary when you come around a corner and there is a scooter going 20 km/h and you are doing 100. The other issue is that they don't follow any rules, they will do completely random acts of stupidity, making them very unpredictable. A common saying is, "Scooter riders think they are made of rubber and are invincible", personally I think most of them are just stupid or don't know any better, at least they act like it. There are hundreds of pictures on the net of what happens when things go horribly wrong, I was going to show some but I decided that if you really want to see them you could google them yourselves.

I have been hit twice by a scooter while I was walking, once while crossing the street, in a crosswalk on a green, the scooter drove through the red. I was knocked on my ass pretty good, I wasn't hurt so much as felt like an idiot. The second time I was standing in front of my office, the rider was trying to beat the traffic by going the wrong way down a one way road, on the sidewalk! In both cases the riders didn't even slow down. The rider that hit me on the sidewalk actually told me I should watch out and get out of his way, he imparted this wisdom on me after hitting me.

Malaysian drivers don't use their indicators, its something they seem incapable of doing, and when they do signal, 9 out of 10 times they go the other way! 

The following clip says it all...

Drinking and driving is very bad here, so bad that we try not to be on the road between 11 pm and about 3 am, this seems to be the worst time. Malaysians aren't really all that worried about getting caught, because they all know that they can just offer to pay the officer and they will get out of any legal complications. I have seen a few drivers that were so drunk that they simply drove off the road and into the drain and stayed there, asleep. There are many road blocks around the end of the month, no they don't have quotas, they need rent money. Seriously it is so bad here that all drivers I know keep at least RM50 in their wallet, usually in 10's so they can negotiate, the cops don't give change.

I used to get stopped by the police frequently, I have never been given a ticket, or summons as Malaysians call them. The one time the cop made it pretty clear that he wanted money I just pretended not to understand, he gave up after a few minutes. I was only pulled over once for anything that was legitimate, but the police officer was very understanding and explained that I couldn't change lanes over a double line, despite the 20 or 30 cars in the line before me. I was expecting him to tell me I could pay the fine right there on the road, thats a common way for the officers to ask for a bribe.

I'll post more about Malaysian Crime later...