Beautiful Butterfly

Last Monday, two monorail trains in Klang Valley abruptly stopped in the middle of the track due to system failure causing thousands of commuters stranded at the train stations for hours. The air-conditioned in the two trains were shut down causing stuffy air in the packed monorails and the doors of the monorails were shut sending mostly women and children feeling panicked and some even fainted. Impatient commuters pried open the doors and a few even stand on the rails.

As interrupted public services happens all the times, it didn’t make it into the big news in the media. The spokeperson for the monorail company even said that their system is good enough that the last time such thing happened was last year. My concern is what is the precautionary actions the company takes in case of emergency such as fire? The failed proof doors could have kill hundreds in the trains.

I remembered a documentary of accident happened at a famous ski resort recounted by the victims in Discovery Channel. The train was not even powered by fuel and as usual during the holiday season, people make their way up the ski resort for holidays. It started with a small fire at the back of the train but the commuters were not able to tell the person operating the train as there were no speakers or cameras connecting to the head of the train. Soon as the train reached the middle of the tunnel, it stopped and  the doors were jammed so people started breaking windows of the train. By the time the passengers at the front of the train realised what was happening, thick somke was already filling the whole tunnel. Panicked, most of the passengers followed their conscience and walked away from the fumes which is to go up the tunnel that is ascending the mountain. Another group of maybe twelve passengers led by a fireman among them told them to bear the smoke and go down the mountain.

Now where is the firemen you must be asking? Since they were at a high altitude and inside the tunnel, firemen were not able to reach them. The twelve people survived while the rest including a few at the resthouse (since the tunnel led to the resthouse) die of smoke inhalation and since then, steps of precaution has been taken to prewent such things from happening in the future.

Back to our local monorails failure few days ago, commuters have no other choice other than continue commuting through trains but what is the monorail management doing to ensure a better safety measures? Are they going to wait for people to sacrifice their lives before pointing fingers and feeling regrets for not having a safety measure? I wonder!

It’s not something new that we, Malaysians are associated with bad driving. As soon as we got behind the wheel, it’s our own world. We let emotions rule our abilities to think rationally. It’s the same old story again and again.

It’s also not surprising that statistic shows that women are worse drivers than men. Wonder how they come out with that statistic but being a woman driver myself, i can’t really argue or stand up against that statistic. Being a constant driver and driving everyday thru and fro to the busiest city in Malaysia, I’m immune to Malaysians bad driving.

Something happened today to spark my anger to write about this today. I was on my way to work and as usual after the Batu 9 tol plaza, the jammed would begin from four to five lanes squeezing into two lanes right in front of the Phoeniz Plaza. Cars would be cutting/changing lanes to get out from that situation. Many times I have blame the irresponsible motorcyclists who ride like nobody business, not even caring about their own safety through the jammed but today, I have seen from my mirror a motorcyclist was riding straight without cutting corners when an idiotic driver in a black Honda CRV cut into the next lane and the back of the car caused the motorcyclist to fell.

Funny thing is the driver did not stop. Our first instinct is to feel concern about the condition of the motorcyclist. I saw the driver passed me and u guessed it, it’s a woman driver. There is no expression from her face and i didn’t even see her looking back at the mirror to see the condition of the motorcyclist. I gave chase and when I’m next to the car, I honked twice at her. Her expression is still as if she didn’t know why she was honked at. I thought of winding down my window to scold her when I see a long queue at the back of me and I quickly abandoned the thought. I think after the whole incident, she still didn’t know that she has knocked down a motorcyclist! She is so ignorant of her surrounding. How can we put such drivers on the road??? She would at least heard a bang on her car and at least look at the back to see where that sound comes from unless she put her radio to a deafening volume.

I have her car plate number WMA 9688 and thought of maybe making a police report but when I told a few persons about the incident, they felt it’s just a normal case and nothing to report about so I also abandoned the idea. Okay, maybe I overreacted. With that speed, the motorcyclist could have only a minor injuries but I wasn’t satisfied that the lady driver didn’t take a look at the victim! How many times while we are driving and people simply cut into our lanes without looking or driving slowly on the fast lanes while a long queue of cars tried to pass him? Obviously these drivers are very much into their world while driving and they don’t even know how to use the rear mirrors on their cars. Man, our roads are a seriously dangerous place to be.