“Jakarta does not have a systematic and comprehensive plan to reduce road accidents,” DTKJ safety and feasibility commission head Najid said in a written statement on recently.

He said that the regulation should include road infrastructure, motorist behavior and management during road accidents.

“It is expected that all of Indonesia should be committed to reducing the number of accidents. But Jakarta does not have a transportation safety plan yet. We bring this up to reduce the number of road accidents,” DTKJ head Iskandar Abubakar said in a discussion recently.

According to data from the Jakarta Police, in 2018, 5,903 traffic accidents occurred in the Greater Jakarta area, a 5 percent increase from the previous year’s 5,642 accidents.

The accidents left 567 people dead, a 1 percent decline from the previous year’s 571.

However, combined with the injured, total casualties increased by 8 percent, with 7,157 casualties in 2018 compared to the previous year’s 6,633.

DTKJ member M. Zainal Abidin said he expected each city working unit (SKPD) to have a program and performance indicator on safety, “but they haven’t been coordinated and managed together so they don’t have any synergy yet to effectively reduce road accidents”.

“Road safety is each citizen’s basic right and should be the concern of the Jakarta governor,” said DTKJ deputy head Donny Andy Saragih.

Meanwhile, Jakarta Transportation Agency safety and technical infrastructure division head Yayat Sudrajat said that while the city had yet to have a comprehensive safety plan, the agency already conducted programs related to safety.

One of the programs to improve road safety was through the electronic registration system for vehicle roadworthy tests (E-KIR) smartphone app, especially for larger vehicles carrying goods and passengers, Yayat said.

“One example is our E-KIR so that road users can learn whether the vehicles [that they might use] are roadworthy,” Yayat said.

He said that according to the agency’s 2018 data, 126,660 vehicles passed safety tests while some 11,652 vehicles had not passed.

Jakarta Bina Marga Road Agency maintenance division head Hans Mahendra said that a draft safety plan would be used by the agency as a guideline to maintain safety on the roads.

“Our focus is to make the roads safe and to reduce road accidents,” Hans said.

He said the agency continuously conducted road safety audits, based on data obtained by the agency itself and from citizens’ reports such as from complaint-handling app Qlue to evaluate road infrastructure that needed to be maintained.

The agency was also given a budget of Rp 235 billion (US$ 16.5 million) for maintaining road and pedestrian infrastructure in 2019.

Meanwhile, Jakarta Traffic Police law enforcement subdivision head Comr. Mohammad Nasir said that in the meantime the Electronic Traffic Law Enforcement (ETLE) was part of the police’s long-term plan for road safety, in the absence of a road safety plan by the Jakarta administration.

“Not all traffic violations will cause an accident, but every accident is always caused by a traffic violation,” Nasir said.

He said that after four months of operation, ETLE cameras, which were currently installed at two spots on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat and Jl. MH. Thamrin in Central Jakarta, had not only been effective in recording traffic violations but also educated motorists to obey the law better as the number of recorded violations was also reduced.

“It means the system has educated citizens not to violate the law,” he said.

From Nov. 1, 2018, to March 16, a total of 9,378 traffic violations were recorded, 1,795 on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat and 7,583 on Jl. MH. Thamrin, respectively.

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