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news
broken bike.jpgSurvivors talk of horrific crash that left eight teenage cyclists dead in Malaysia after motorist "ploughed into" group
Survivors of a horrific crash in Malaysia that left eight teenage cyclists dead and eight others seriously injured have spoken of the moment a car driven by a 22-year-old woman ploughed into the group in which they were riding.
Six of the victims, all male and aged between 13 and 16, died at the scene, with the other two losing their lives as they were being taken to hospital by ambulance.
Five of the riders who were injured sustained broken legs while two others suffered bleeding on the brain and another was left with head injuries. Two of them are reported to be in critical condition.
The incident happened at 3.30am on Saturday morning in the Middle Ring Road in Johor Bahru, a city in the south of the Malay Peninsula opposite Singapore.
The road is classified as an Expressway, a high-speed route that often has a separate motorcycle lane, and road.cc is seeking to establish whether or not bicycles would be banned from the one where the tragedy took place.
But a source who visits the area regularly told us it that in his opinion, an Expressway is "no place for cyclists," especially at night.
The group, which according to police numbered between 20 and 30 riders, had been planning to cycle to the city’s main square.
One of the survivors, 16-year-old Muhamad Farhan Che Mat, was quoted on Asia One as saying that the group of riders met up once a week and would ride around the city until dawn.
"Most of us were caught off guard,” he said. “We don't know what hit us from behind and most of us went flying a few metres due to the impact."
Abdul Samad Abdul Kadir, also 16, revealed it was the first time he had ridden with the group. "We were planning to head to the Pandan area when some of us decided to race,” he said.
"I was uncomfortable with the idea and told them I was going to leave," he added.
Local chief police Assistant Commissioner Sulaiman Salleh said that police had long been concerned about night-time group rides by youths on bicycles that often did not meet legal requirements because of modifications such as removing the brakes, reports the Borneo Post.
“Such bicycles are used for joyrides in the wee hours of the morning because cyclists think there are no cars around at that time,” he said.
He revealed that last year, 37 bicycles that did not comply with the law were confiscated during 28 operations carried out by officers, and that police had continued that exercise into 2017, with a further 17 bikes seized during five operations.
“We are not pinning the blame on anyone, but we advise everyone to abide by the law. It is an offence to modify bicycles,” he continued.
He said the bikes of all eight of the teenagers who died had been modified in some way.
Police are continuing their investigation, but Assistant Commissioner Salleh said that because the road undulates and twists, the driver would not have seen the group until it was too late.
He said she “ploughed into” the group of riders “when she was believed to have failed to brake in time.”
He added initial investigations showed that she was not drunk, had not been using a mobile phone and she was not believed to have been driving at excessive speed.
Pictures of the scene show that her car overturned in the crash and the motorist was treated in hospital for minor injuries and shock. She was reported to be in police.
Deputy minister of home affairs Nur Jazlan Mohamed called on state legislators to ban underage youths from certain locations at night, reports the Malaysia Mail.
He said that in Johor Bahru, there were “many cases of underaged youths going out late at night” and that “the problem has been taking place for several years before this.”
The minister added that while he had urged police to tackle the issue, “the problem is the children are under-aged and the police cannot take harsh action against them.”
The mother of one of the boys who was killed, 14-year-old Mohamad Shahrul Izwan Azzuraimee, told Asia One that when she last spoke to her son on Friday, he had told her he was going to a festival celebrating Chinese New Year.
She said he usually cycled close to their home, adding: "I was not aware that he went to town to meet up with his friends."
The country’s prime minister, Najib Razak, took to Twitter to express his condolences to the families of the youths who had lost their lives.
“Read the news on the 8 teenagers and children who died from being hit by a vehicle in Johor this morning,” he wrote. “It is very sad. Condolences to the families of the victims."
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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31 comments
http://instagram.com/tenteraflyjb
Some of them are from thise group
Following their initial investigation, Police in JB confirmed the driver was not drunk, was not speeding and was not using their mobile phone at the time of the incident. (link)
As for the children. Rest in Peace;
Two children remain in ICU, six more remain in hospital, but are considered stable and happily two more of the injured have been released from hospital.
I think there maybe arguments looking to question the driver as the public response / line has been to blame the children for their potential drug gang associations.
As already said, I am sure the kids shouldn't have been there, probably were unsuitably lit, probably not abiding rules of the road... does that really matter?
What need to be looked at, as intently as the childrens charaters have been assasinated in the press, is whether the driver did have good line of sight, did have poor lighting etc.
There seems to be a a contradiction between the press release and the images of the road highlighted.
I don't want a witch hunt, but when the press and public office are so immediatly squaring blame at those that are no longer here to defend themselves, I get twitchy.
This appears to be the location, judging by the news video.
This video was posted today, driving along the same road at night, passing the same location (the same wall on the left) about 1:25 mins in.
Very sad, 8 kids dead. I've been to JB a few times, not somewhere I'd choose to cycle.
Me either - this is clearly no place for cyclists. Just because it's not explicitly illegal, doesn't mean common sense wouldn't tell you to stick to the side roads.
I commented on something over the weekend that I feel is equalyl relevant here.
When I drive at night, in my car, around town, or on motorways etc, i can still see a fair amount.
By a fair amount, I can see several seconds travelling time ahead of me... I can see pedestrians on the pavement, or in the road... I can see cyclists with or without lights.
They are all there in front of me... to be seen... if you look... if you are attentive.
If I can't see a few seconds ahead, I will slow to a speed that enables me to stop / react within the distance I can see.
I thought about this last night driving back from the folks, thinking about a chap I know who crashed into the a broken down car stuck in the fast lane of the motorway.
An accident waiting to happen my mate said... but an accident that hadn't happened for several minutes beforehand until my mate came along. Countless other cars had seen and reacted in plenty of time... but my mate didn't.
Similarly the tragedy at Rhyl a few years back... Black ice on the roads, meant it was an unavoidable accident that couldn't have been avoided. Except that the corner in question wasn't littered with crashed cars who had also failed to make the bend due to the ice... only one car failed to make it around, with tragic results.
My point?
We need to see this as it is... It is poor driving... nearly every time, the driver hasfailed in their basic duty of care. Yes, circumstances present situations that challenge that driver to do the right thing... the right thing they have all passed a test demosntrating their ability to do... yet time and time again, drivers are coming up short.
And what do we see? We see excuses such as 'the driver did nothing wrong', however the driver DID NOTHING RIGHT.
This is not fucking rocket science... its peoples lives, peoples lives that are expendable. Look at the aviation industry as an example of what can be done. Every serious incident is investigated, and in return the safety record is seriously good.
We need to stop accepting poor driving as inevitable... and by we I mean society as a whole.
^ This. A thousand times this.
Why do we normalise a, shall we say, leisurely approach to what essentially is operating dangerous machinery?
Why do we think travelling at high speeds is a god-given right that trumps duty of care?
Some generations ago we went down the wrong path in terms of transport. I'm not saying the motor car should not have been invented, but I'm starting to think it should not be allowed as a form of private transport.
The vast majority of people would get on perfectly fine just with public transport or walking. Private cars are a convenience, a luxury - an indulgence that costs hundreds of thousands of lives every year throughout the world, millions if we're adding the pollution they cause.
We need to completely rethink our transport model, globally. The private motor car as such is a really, really bad idea.
sold as a symbol of freedom and independence, while allowing tight governmental control and taxation - much like the cigarette was marketed in its early days - unsurprising then that individuals develop a misplaced revolutionary fervour towards it!
100% right. Never drive in such a manner that you cannot stop in the road length which is visible in front of you. You see drivers on the motorway who are following 1 second off the bumper of the car in front. If there is an accident in front of them, they'll barely get their foot off the gas and to the brake before they pile into the car infront, let alone actually apply some brake. My >4 second following rule doesnt seem to make my commute to work noticably longer.
Killing 8 and injuring about as many with a car which is 2m wide ... surely that means it was at best hitting a line of cyclists 3 wide and five deep? A line of cyclists 5 deep is pretty long. Doesnt sound like the driver was driving at an appropriate speed for how little distance she could see in front of her. And who at 3:30AM in the morning really needs to be pushing it on their drive? There's nobody around.
I saw a traffic crash tv show once, and they interviewed a traffic safety design engineer. He said how they intentionally don't make lane markings really visible or road lights really good, as if people can see clearly, then they drive faster. It's so backwards. Car headlights could be way better, road lighting could make it like day time, but then we'd just have idiots driving at 90mph on a rainy night. There's the suggesting that car steering wheel airbags should be replaced with big one foot spikes. That way the driver will be terrified of driving too fast, as they'll be impaled on the spike. Instead the cars have crumple zones and a dozen airbags to make the drivers feel indestructible.
Talk about victim blaming!
These were kids on bicycles, it's hardly twisted youth delinquency is it?!
Horrible, ghastly thing to happen.
But I don't think that just being a cyclist in the UK gives me any special insight into how to contextualise things that happen in such radically different social contexts. There are just so many factors I'm not familiar with. And I suspect, given the massively higher road KSI rate in non-Western countries generally, the issues involved are much bigger than just the things we argue about domestically.
Which doesn't mean I blindly accept the comments here from people from Malaysia either, mind. Any more than I'd expect foreigners to take random internet comments from Brits as being definitive truths about the UK (especially if they are Daily Mail comments). I just don't think I'm in a position to judge.
Everyone above is an arse. It is just awful regardless of the circumstances . Rest in peace
I'm from Malaysia and regarding this incident, it has been waiting to happen. The harsh reason for this is becos here, there's a group that's called "mat rempit" that rides heavily modified motorbikes while influenced by drugs and riding in a very dangerous manners that cause a lot of accident for road users as well as costing their own lives or even others that are innocent.
Now, these cyclists are the ones that haven't "graduate" to these mat rempit. They are still kids, couldn't afford a motorbike yet they want to immitate these ill social behaviour, so they resort to the bicycle, which is very cheap here (those crappy ones) and modified it so they can perform those stupid tricks like mat rempit. Heck, they even do it on the expressway like the mat rempits!
It's an unfortunate incident, this case, but as I mentioned earlier, it is just matter of sooner or later.
You can find more footages of these in Youtube. Look for mat rempit and mat rempit basikal
You ...... are from a pit of illogical depravity. Get back in there.
Pardon?
Why the attack on Kenong and/or Malaysia?
Kenong simply gave a explanation of why a large group of teens might have been cycling on an expressway at night and that an incident such as this was likely to happen sooner or later.
His post in no way condoned the actions of (a) the kids, (b) the driver or (c) the authorities in the aftermath.
Who or what is illogical or depraved?
Who is attacking Malaysia?
8 people die and the public response of Kenong is to "explain" without proof that these people would have become members of a motorcycle gang that uses drugs and performs stupid tricks that cause accidents.
The only thing simple associated with that explanation is you.
Ah I see - people want more facts to better understand what's happened, but then don't like them when they're provided? Gotcha.
First and foremost, this is tragic, no doubt.
However riding (apparently) poor bikes on an expressway isn't the brightest idea if - as it appears - they want to emulate 'the cool, older kids' doing the same on motorbikes.
Insofar as the car driver being blamed for this, shame on you all. The pictures don't in any way show a concise view of the road before the crash and besides, on an expressway a driver cannot predict that a group of cyclists are going to be in the road at the hour of the morning. For that matter, who's to say they were all in one lane? They were possible spread across two, even three lanes?
Further, given the closing speed of the car vs the walking pace of a cyclist, there's no room at all to react and most likely explains why the car overturned, as the first instinct would've been to swerve.
Which facts are those O Seeker of the Higher Truth?
All I saw from Kenong were assertions that these young people had something to do with drugs and motorbikes .... all unproven and highly distateful.
Have you ever considered a job as a vicar? Judge? Perhaps a journalist even? It is obvious that you are judicious and empathetic character, able to cut through the confusion around these sorts of issues and identify the important aspects of a tragedy.
Unlike the other fools posting here who assume that a car crashing into 8 people and killing them has something to do with the car driver, you are very cleverly able to identify the Real Facts which are that you can imagine that the cyclists were spread out all over the road and it was all their fault anyway.
I was disgusted by Kenong's smear of these children as future drug-using motorbike gang-members, but really your attempt to attribute blame to the cyclists here makes me assume that your essence is that which I occasionally scrape off my shoe.
I'm trying to be objective, not trying to blame in either direction or jumping on the Lynch Mob Wagon with everyone else. None of us was there, but everyone seems intent on blaming the driver who, by observation elsewhere in these comments, might have been unsighted because they were joining at the junction (or maybe she was joining and thereby unsighted) I also did not state 'they were all over the road and therefore it was their fault anyway' - I said 'possibly?' so thanks for selectively mis-reading my comments. We might never find out what really happened, but blaming the driver 'because car' does nobody any good.
Actually, that strikes me as a much more civilised and logical starting point than blaming the more vulnerable road users 'because road'.
We might never know what happened, but one thing that didn't: those kids didn't reverse into the car at 60mph.
Be aware that many southeast asian media outlets have a relaxed attitude to blood and guts so think twice before watching the video on the Asia One link.
Thanks for the warning.
Personally I wish our media had a less sanitised approach to blood and guts. A few photos of the carnage caused in vehicle collisions over here, and they might be afforded their proper priority in the national conscience.
Well if they were indeed at an expressway and if they had no lights or they had with near dead batteries it would be very hard to evade them. Let's face it, unlit expressways with 100+km/h speeds and normal car lights (not high beam) is something very dangerous that yet everybody does it and there isn't any law against it.
I don't see any mention of no lights or near dead batteries so why bring that into the equation and is pure speculation on your part? We could speculate many possibilities but perhaps we should stick to the facts.
Based on the overall context and the description of our Malaysian friend, I guess it is higly unlikely that these kids were using decent rear lights and full set of reflectors.
But even if they had they been all using 1w Smart Lunars (it rocks!) with fresh batteries, they would it be safe to ride on an expressway at night? Would you? Just try to imagine the next time you get on car at an expressway at night with three figure speed and medium lights (as practically everybody does) how hard it would be to evade a near stationary object even if it is well lit. Of course an alert driver with a decent car and could perform an emergency braking but if this happens frequently, it is an accident waiting to happen
Of course the kids don't have to blamed as they aren't drivers to understand how dangerous is to see a bunch of bicycles at night while you are on at least 100km/h and they have reduced judgement skills overall due to their age. Its primarily their parents fault and the police/motorway operator who allowed or didn't spot such behaviour.
How does this article start by being a report on a disgusting tragedy by an idiot in a car, then slowly morphs into blaming youngsters for modifying their bikes? This Deputy Minister should be ashamed of himself.
Well we all know that having good brakes on your bike will save you when a car rear-ends you at speed.
I would like to understand this better. How exactly is a brake of any use, when some car is running you over from behind?
Not saying, that they shouldn't have had propperly equipped bikes. But I think some strong light would have been of more use here. No information at all about the exact equipment anyway, so most of it seems guesswork.
Set irony filter to stun.
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