If they were Singaporean, no more would die.

I don’t care for the Singapore Minister of Transport. I find him arrogant and ineffectual.

And in the next couple of posts I’m going to lay into the good Mr Raymond Lim and provide some suggestions he and his team may wish to consider. Well, perhaps they will then actually do some work.

Let’s start with one area where I think the Ministry of Transport has failed abysmally -  protecting the safety of migrant/foreign workers on their way to and from work.

Currently Singapore is one of the few, if not the only developed country, which allows the transport of general workers in the back of trucks normally meant for carrying cargo. Besides the obvious safety issues, these poor guys are often exposed to the elements and I’ve frequently seen them huddling together under a tarpaulin or canvas sheet when being ferried somewhere in the rain.

A couple of years ago, Mei and I witnessed a truly horrific accident on the Pan-Island Expressway. Early that morning, we were going to our car which was parked at the multi-storey carpark adjacent to to our apartment block. This carpark is just a few metres from the PIE and as we walked to the car I heard a short screech of locked wheels then a series of bumps. Having followed motor rallies in Malaysia, I immediately recognised this as the sound of a vehicle turning over and we rushed to the side to look onto the highway. I shall never forget what we saw: a car was stopped on the slow lane, facing the wrong way while a few metres up the road, a 14-foot truck lay upside-down across two lanes. In its wake was scattered a trail of debris. And bodies.

Then I noticed some of these bodies were still moving and one was crawling on his hands and knees. I heard a keening cry ‘boss! boss!’ and then another person wailing in pain. I urged Mei not to look and called for an ambulance, screaming at the call centre operator in frustration when he insisted on taking down my name and phone number ‘There are bodies on the highway. Stop wasting time and send ambulances NOW!!!’ I think he realised something was up because I spied some of my neighbours on the phone too - the switchboard must have suddenly lit up. Not too long after, the emergency vehicles did indeed arrive en masse.

We later found out one of the workers had died. Considering the carnage we saw, this was a miracle. Not, I’m sure, to his grieving relative who was interviewed at the hospital where he lamented ‘I brought him here to get a better life. What am I to tell his family now?’

This accident was discussed quite a lot over the next few days and a friend summed it up best for all of us when he said ‘This has been going on for too long, but sadly nothing much is going to change unless a Singaporean family dies’. We all agreed cynically, but correctly as it turned out.

Two years later and check out these stories:
4 die after lorry hits trailer
Lorry was overcrowded
and so on.

In the intervening time, the Land Transport Authority hasn’t exactly done nothing. They did introduce some new laws. Essentially, trucks can still carry passengers in the back/cargo deck, but the seats in the cab must first be filled. Then, the occupants at the back must sit with the tops of their heads no more than 1.1 metres from the base of the cargo deck.

OK, firstly, why make things so complicated? I’ve seen a traffic cop walk up to inspect a passenger-laden lorry armed with a tape measure. A tape measure for heaven’s sake!

If I had drafted this law, I would have made it at-a-glance simple: Passengers at the back to sit on the floor of the truck and to have their elbow line below the level of the side rails/body panel. Simple. Easy to spot when an offence is committed. No need for tape measures and so on.

That is to say IF I agreed with the idea of trucks being used to ferry workers which I utterly and completely DO NOT.

And take a look at the regulations to come:
More Stringent Measures To Enhance Safety Of Workers Transported On Lorries

By 2012, all that need be done is to install higher railings. Also, workers will have additional space around them, effectively reducing the number of workers allowed on the cargo deck of each truck.

THAT’S ALL??? And it’s going to take two whole years to do this?

Look, here’s a picture of a truck. 

 It is meant for carrying goods and cargo.

These are a couple of pictures of buses.

They are meant for carrying people.

Can you not grasp the difference between the two?

Cannot? OK, then sit down, yes sit right down Mr multi-million-dollar minister, and let me help you understand it a little better…

Why trucks are not safe for carrying passengers:
1.    Trucks when carrying little in the back are very nose-heavy leading to higher chance of rear-wheel skidding. People weigh little. So, when a truck is only carrying people, it has a higher chance of skidding than if it carried cargo.

2.    Trucks have more primitive suspension systems. These are meant to withstand the weight of heavy loads and as a consequence are not as pliant as say, the suspension of a bus. As a direct consequence of this, trucks, when unladen, are not as stable as buses.

3.    Trucks have no seats. Therefore no seat belts. Even if the truck doesn’t turn turtle in an accident, there’s no way a person seated at the back is going to be able to hold on in the event of an accident. Ever been on a roller-coaster? You know why those things have harnesses or seat belts? Because you’d fall right out otherwise, right? Well, would it surprise you to know that the force a passenger feels in an accident is greater than that on the average rollercoaster? So, without a seat and a belt, how on earth do you expect a human body not to be flung right out onto the road when the truck he is traveling in slams on its brakes, or worse, slams into something else, decelerating from 50 km/h to 0 in a split-second?

4.    Truck cargo areas have no bodywork. Even after those new regulations kick in in 2012, they will still have no bodywork. In case it has also escaped you, railings have gaps in them. Bodywork does not. In an accident, even if the railings kept his body within the truck, his arms, legs and (shudder) head may stick out. I once saw a video of former world champ Carlos Sainz rolling his Toyota Celica rally car in the Rally of Australia in 1991. As it tumbled at speed, I saw Carlos’ head stick out through the open window. It was a miracle he didn’t lose it. A foreign worker in a truck may not be so lucky in the event of an accident - even if the truck didn’t turn over.

Do I need to go on?

OK, here’s the rub. Trucks are not safe for transporting workers. Buses are. Simple as that.
Outlaw the use of trucks for the purpose of ferrying people. And guess what? You can be credited with creating a whole new industry - that of general worker transport. I can just see Comfort, Prime, SMRT and a string of other taxi companies jumping onto the bandwagon of bidding for bus COEs, and setting up bus chartering services for the thousands of factories and construction companies around.

Oh! A thought suddenly occurred to me. Perhaps the reason you've been reluctant to implement this is the fact that a certain neighbour to the north has indeed been doing this rather successfully. For oh, maybe 30 years or so? Yes, Malaysia has indeed had a thriving ‘Bas Kilang’ (factory bus) industry for many many years. Heck, if you take a look at the queue of traffic coming into and going out of Singapore every day, you’d see maybe hundreds of blue Bas Kilang.

But I guess that would be real hard to swallow wouldn’t it? Admitting that maybe you had something to learn from Malaysia.

Note: All pics downloaded from the web. Some cannot be credited. Thanks to all for helping make the point that workers must not be ferried on the cargo decks of trucks.

Next:

The complete and utterly despicable ignoring of Bicycles as a form of public transport, and the safety and wellbeing of cyclists.