Final report on Genting bus crash made public

The independent advisory panel report on the Genting Highland bus crash has been made public, Thursday, with 51 recommendations to prevent similar tragedies from recurring.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said that the report confirmed that the main factor that caused the Aug 21 accident last year was speeding.

“The main factors were the speeding and faults with the driver. But there are also many other weaknesses including those related to road, vehicle, operation safety that we need to resolve,” he told reporters at the Defence Ministry headquarters here, Thursday.

Hishammuddin said what was important about the report was that the recommendations were not limited to the bus crashes but can be applied to all hill side roads that were prone to accidents and classified as black spots across the country.

Among the recommendations is to have the independent advisory panel extended to permanently become the National Transportation Safety Board.

The role of the board, said Hishammuddin, is to continually advise, investigate, analyse and report all recommendations and improvements to the Transport Minister on safety issues involving roads, rails, aviation as well as maritime.

"The report can be read by the public. I hope that it can help make sure the board we have set up to be a permanent institution to continually monitor to prevent such incidents from recurring.”

Aside from the board, other recommendations include those on safe operation practices, emergency response and rescue as well as strengthening and empowering the public for road safety.

These included establishing a nationwide systematic road safety assessment and risk mapping; strengthening the enforcement for the use of safety barrier at high risk sections; review the existing approval and licensing processes of public service and goods vehicle; setting up a national roll-out of computer aided dispatch (CAD 999) systems.

Hishammuddin said the report should be accessible on the websites of the Transport Ministry website and the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety and Research.

In the accident at Kilometre 3.6 Jalan Genting Highlands-Kuala Lumpur, 37 people were killed while 16 others were injured, making it the worst ever road tragedy in the country.