19 deaths a day and you know who you can blame?

The world's deadliest roads

Why, Najib Razak, of course! I am typing this very slowly because of a swan neck finger injury suffered in a minor bike vs bike crash recently. The pain would wake me up some nights but I am grateful that it hadn't been more serious. Reading Life of Annie's weekend, sudden solo campaign on Road Safety (and watching those terrible clips) makes me realize how lucky I have been. 

Thanks to Annie, I now know that 19 Malaysians die in road crashes every day. That's like 7,000 a year! Half of them bikers. Most of them young and healthy. 

Indeed, Malaysia has one of the world's deadliest roads and yet it's seemingly business as usual. Some of Annie's readers are so angered and frustrated they are holding the Prime Minister responsible!

Of course it is not fair to blame the Prime Minister for the deaths, just like it's nonsensical to blame him for the ringgit woes or for the haze. 

Nonetheless. this is an area I believe the Najib Administration should pay more heed to and can make a big difference. Make it a national priority to bring down the number of accidents and deaths on the road. We don't care who you blame - blame everyone and anyone you like - but the government must spend more (money, resources, time, whatever it takes) to make our roads safer and our young ones live longer and happier. I hear the government's budget on road safety campaigns has been cut drastically over the years. Why is that so? And where are the corporate citizens, shouldn't they be concerned, too?

Annie's commenter has a point: if the authorities are weak in enforcing the law, nobody's going to respect them, both the law and the authorities. When that happens, you can't blame people when they start blaming the authorities ... -rocky's bru