Why is Malaysia’s top car blogger’s office full of…baby seats!?

Raya is upon us! While this is a joyful time of balik-ing kampung, baju baru, and keduris, let’s be mindful of road safety. We know, nag nag nag road safety again pfft, BUTTT hear us out first ugaiz…

Remember the Myvi racing accident on the DUKE highway last year? A very tragic incident that was still talked about long after it happened, and as far as we can tell the court case is still ongoing.

In case you don’t remember, here’s a recap – On 2 May 2015, one yellow and one white Myvi were allegedly driving recklessly fast. The yellow Myvi grazed the Pajero on the right, making it skid to the left and hit the white Myvi. The Pajero spun a few times before stopping in the middle of the road. Everyone in the Pajero, Fairuz Nizam Husain, his wife Nova Safitri Azhari, and their six-month-old baby Nur Firuza Annisa, were killed.

Yerrrrr 😡 why CILISOS bring this up? Well…

 

Raya is the time you should care MORE about car safety!

Granted the Myvi-Pajero incident didn’t happen on Raya, but the undeniable fact is that accident rates do spike during any holiday seasons in Malaysia! Whether Hari Raya, Chinese New Year or Deepavali, the risk of crashing is much higher with so many cars on the road. Unfortunately we couldn’t find statistics specifically for musim perayaan accidents, but there are only annual total figures from 1997-2014.

However, the understanding that accident numbers go up during festival periods is touted by ALL road and transportation authorities alike in the country, including the Ministry of Transport. Reasons for the increase being not only more cars on the road, but drivers breaking speed limits to reach home on time, racing, changing lanes without signaling and other very bad practices…

Bad practices like NOT using a child car seat, for instance… like the parents of six-month-old baby Nur Firuza Annisa who were driving the Pajero. Not that we wanna take the attention away from the Myvi drivers who were allegedly driving recklessly, but people were debating that the baby might have survived if her parents had strapped her into a child car seat.

Child seats are not mandatory in Malaysia yet although the government has been looking into it for a long time. (Only three ASEAN countries – Singapore, Brunei and Cambodia – have such a law.) We don’t know what’s the need to look into it further, cos there’s no shortage of research showing that child car seats SAVES children’s lives, even on a simple Google search! Watch this video to see why:

Holding children on their laps of what most Malaysian parents do. Bad.Idea. An adult does not have the required strength to prevent a child being thrown forward at any speed. Even at just 50 kmph, an unsecured infant weighing 7kg will be thrown forward at a force equivalent to an adult falling from a 5-storey building!!

Some excuses they give are child seat too expensive la, take up too much space, the kid won’t sit still in the car seat, etc. Some parents have even bought well-meaning but inadequate replacement for child seats:

 

Now you can drive back to kampung with a child seat for FREE!

This da part you were all waiting for hee..hee.. Paultan.org and Mercedes-Benz are renting out 185 child car seat for ONE month until 31 July 2016. You will need to give them a deposit of RM150 or RM300 depending on the type of seat, when you collect it at The School Jaya One, Petaling Jaya. It’ll be fully refunded when you return the seat at the end of Raya month.

There are four types of seats available:

1. Koopers Jive convertible child seat
2. Koopers Mambo
3. SNSKIDZ Star convertible car seat
4. SNSKIDZ Pro

All you need to do is fill up this form:

By the way, if you wanna BUY the car seats, you can get them in any mall baby department stores. Or you can find these brands online at Lazada and Safe n’ Sound. Kudos to Paultan.org and Mercedes for initiating safe driving practices for Malaysian families.

But really, it’s up to Malaysian parents to keep their own kids safe – NOT the authorities! “Some parents don’t use helmets when they bring their children around on a motorcycle even though it is the law,” said Road Transport Department (RTD) Enforcement Director Jaafar Mohamed.

“Take this analogy, if you are at home, do you lock your doors? Of course you will but it is not a law to do it. You do it because it is safer. It is the same with this matter. Don’t wait for a law, just practise it.” – Jaafar Mohamed, The Malay Mail Online

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