Be Careful as Accident Rates in Indonesia Rise

The Ministry of Transportation is still very concerned about the high number of road traffic accidents. This must indeed be a serious concern of the government.

Collaboration between stakeholders is the key to success in improving road safety.

This was conveyed by the Minister of Transportation, Budi Karya Sumadi, when he was the keynote speaker at the FGD of the Land Transportation Safety Expert Session.

"Traffic culture, driver competence, understanding of regulations, and the condition of land transportation facilities and infrastructure are some of the factors that cause accidents, in addition to extreme weather factors which are also often the cause of accidents," Budi explained, Thursday (24/3/2022).

Budi Karya Sumadi also explained that the government's commitment to improving road safety has been stated in the Presidential Instruction No. 4/2013 on the Decade of Road Safety Action Program.

This program has the target of realizing 5 (five) pillars of road safety action.

"The Ministry of Transportation is responsible for the third pillar, namely safe vehicles," he said.

Most recently, the Minister continued, Presidential Regulation No. 1 of 2022 on the National General Plan for Traffic and Road Transportation Safety (RUNK LLAJ) was issued on January 3, 2022.

"The regulation serves as a reference for Ministries/Institutions, Provincial Regional Governments, and Regency/City Regional Governments in synergizing the formulation of planning documents, implementation, and control of road transportation traffic," the Minister explained.

Not only that, the Ministry of Transportation also noted that the number of road accidents still needs attention because it increased by 3,000 cases from 2020 to 2021.

"The number of accidents and fatalities in our country is still quite high, in 2020 there were 100 thousand accidents and 23 thousand fatalities (cases). While in 2021 there will be 103 thousand accidents and 25 thousand fatalities," said Director of Road Transportation Facilities at the Directorate General of Land Transportation of the Ministry of Transportation Danto Restyawan.

This means that in one year there was an increase of 3,000 accidents and 2,000 fatalities.

According to Danto, this condition needs to be a common concern.

All stakeholders are asked to work together to reduce the number of accidents and fatalities.

"All stakeholder We must work together to reduce the number of accidents and fatalities because the impact is very long and significant," he said.