Losing control of vehicles identified as main cause of fatal accidents in 2015

Losing control off their vehicles has been identified as the main cause for road accident fatalities last year, said Bukit Aman traffic police chief SAC Mahamad Akhir Darus.

He said the losing control attributed to the highest number of fatal accidents with 1,713 deaths followed by veering into the opposite lane (764 cases).

"Fatal accidents caused by overtaking accounted for 689 cases. Other factors included speeding, random speeding and others," he told reporters when announcing the 2015 Traffic Performance Report at Bukit Aman, here Tuesday.

Apart from that, Mahamad Akhir said the increase in the number of people, vehicles and new drivers was among causes for an increase in road fatalities.

"Throughout last year, there were 6,706 road accident deaths with motorcyclists and pillion riders accounting for the highest number of deaths with 4,203, followed by car accidents which claimed 1,358 lives, pedestrian 482 cases, lorry 223 cases and others such as bus 440 cases," he said.

He said Selangor, Johor, Kuala Lumpur and Penang were among states with the highest number of road accidents while Perlis, Kelantan, Terengganu and Malacca recorded the lowest number of road accidents.

Commenting on Ops Warta, Mahamad Akhir said more than 1.8 million warrants of arrests had been issued since 2010.

"From the total, 419,406 warrants of arrest were still outstanding. Police will not stop efforts to track down traffic offenders until they settle their dues," he said.

He said in 2015, there were 162,958 operations conducted nationwide with more than six million summonses issued.