Safety 1st

Aren’t we all glad that we have excellent roads these days ? In the past, almost all our roads were small and not well maintained and worst of all there was no rest areas to ease oneself. More often than not, we resort to the nearby bushes to do our thing. It was not too bad for the guys, but for the girls, they either do the same or bear it all the way until reaching the next possible stop. Whilst our lay-byes or R&R are almost self sufficient for the motorists needs, we are still lacking in overnight accommodations at these places although at some places this is already provided for.

I recall the time when we were in England and heading towards the Lake District one evening. It was raining then and by the time we were at the Lake District, it got dark and we decided to find a place to put up for the night. Searched we did all over the town and the adjacent and surrounding areas, but we could not find any available room for the night. We became desperate and decided to go back on the highway heading towards Scotland. It was almost an hour or so later that we saw the R&R and stopped over. It was usual to find budget room for the night at these places in Britain and we were confident that we would find one. Imagine our dismay to find none available !

To go any further would be crazy, we thought, since it was already getting pretty late already. Finally, we decided to park and stay in the car at the R&R carpark. Since it got very cold indeed that night, we had the engine on with the heater activated throughout the night. Lucky for us there was no gas leakage of any kind as otherwise we might have died from carbon monoxide as it has quite often happen to people who do this.

Only recently in our country, a case of death to an infant of four years occurred when the child’s parents left the infant to continue sleeping in their car with the engine and air-conditioning on, only to find their infant had died of carbon monoxide. Such tragedy is uncalled for due to ignorance and carelessness. More often than not, parents do all these things out of love for their children, because they do not wish to discomfort or awake the children unnecessarily.

We once nearly suffocate our nephew in our Volkswagen when we had the car’s windows closed and left him in the car for a short while to allow us to go to the nearest shop to get our necessities. To our shocking discovery, there before us just before we opened our car’s doors, our nephew was struggling to breathe and sweating profusely ! We could not imagine what would have happened had we prolonged our absence then !

Nowadays, we find some cars have automatic locks in place the moment the engine is switched on. Quite frankly, I do not like such cars. I sense it a death trap in the event of an accident or fire in the car. I do not even fancy locking my car doors when driving except perhaps when I park stationary at any place. But this is done more as a precaution against roadside robbery which is quite common in our country.

These days due to the influx of illegals and the unemployed road side muggings of ladies are becoming common in our country since the last two years, something we should not be proud of as direct opposite to what we used to have those years past when we felt proud that such happenings never took place anywhere in our country. Sometimes you begin to wonder if we have at all made any progress in civility and public consciousness. Incidence of murder of many kinds you would never have thought of are already an everyday occurrence these days and parents are definitely scared of leaving their school going children to wait for their school buses unattended and the same when these children return home from school later in the day.

Of course there is no exception to leaving our homes without proper locks and security alarms where possible. Security alarms provide no security too. Burglers are known to have entered these secured home in broad daylights and conspicuous to the neighbors too without undue care to themselves. More often than not they disguise themselves very well indeed as repairmen from the utilities such as the telecoms or the tenaga nasional for that matter. Nobody would know the wiser and in the Kuala Lumpur vicinity where almost everyone is busy at work and neighbors never get to know or bothered to know each other, the robbers or burglars have free play !

written by Tunku Farid
edited by Aida Halim