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Letter : Bus accidents
Once again many traffic accidents are being reported by the media
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nce again many traffic accidents are being reported by the media. I do not understand why the police always arrest the bus drivers. The people that they should arrest are the owners of these troublesome buses.
Numerous buses are in bad condition, with no rear lights, bad tires, faulty exhaust systems, leaking radiators, problematic brakes and air conditioning that does not work.
Bus owners do not care about maintenance; they only care about the income derived from their buses plying routes across Indonesia.
Periodic maintenance checks carried out by the traffic police are not worth anything. If the driver pays the police he gets the green light to continue operating a bus which is not roadworthy. The list outlining engine problems is extremely long but who cares?
Bus owners do not even want to sit in their own buses knowing how badly maintained and how dangerous these vehicles are. Passengers are the ones who always become the victims of these dangerous buses.
Insurance companies should start collecting refunds from bus owners.
If the authorities fail in their duty to examine and check these un-roadworthy buses and continue to give the green light to drivers due to bribes, bus owners will continue to allow drivers to steer these dangerous vehicles.
It is time for the government to step in and take dangerous buses and trucks off the road.
Last Saturday I had to go to Pondok Indah leaving Bogor at 8 a.m. The Jagorawi traffic jam started after the Shell fuel station because a heavily laden truck with apparent engine problems was partly blocking the entrance to TB Simatupang toll road.
It took me over two hours to reach Pondok Indah. When I returned to Bogor at 4 p.m., this truck was still sitting there blocking the entrance to TB Simatupang. Traffic jams from Bogor to Jakarta already began at Sentul Circuit.
Thumbs up to our traffic police and the toll-road authorities for failing to remove this big heavy truck after some eight hours. It’s probably still sitting there.
Lynna van der Zee-Oehmke
Bogor, West Java
