Road Manners

Hi All,

We still see a lot of irresponsible drivers everyday. Speeding cars is still a common scene. People are overtaking and going into different lanes without giving proper signals. Do they know they need to use signals / indicators? I have experienced this a few times before where a car suddenly appeared in my lane from the right. There are cars who purposely follow closely behind you on the right lane forcing you to move to the middle lane. Some of these drivers will honk or display bright lights at you.

There are drivers who make illegal U-Turns. Some cars are parked indiscriminately at junctions. There also cars that are parked indiscriminately even though proper parking lots are provided. Drivers could not be bothered to adjust their car or park their cars properly causing traffic kiosk. Some drivers double / triple parked their cars resulting in traffic congestions. This prompted DBKL and MBPJ to make roads one way. Previously in Taman Connaught, we can see a lot of double parking but now it is a one way road. There are no more double parking. It is worst in Damansara Utama (DU) whereby there are triple parked cars. There are some improvements now. There also people turning right from the left lane where the left lane is going straight and vice versa. This is cutting queue. Most of the cars in Malaysia also do not give way to pedestrians.

In Australia, car drivers are fined if they do not give way to pedestrians. While I was studying at Monash University in Caulfield between 2004 and 2006, a speeding sports car stopped for me to cross the road at the small roundabout there. We don't see that in Malaysia. Cars just sped through. We will get honked when we stop at a pedestrian crossing. 

Pedestrians also should cross roads using the crossing or the pedestrian bridge. There are a lot of shoppers who just crossed in the middle of Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman. As drivers, we need to be very careful. I can't understand the risk they are taking crossing in the middle of the road instead of using the pedestrian crossing. It is much safter doing that.


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In the morning at the fork between East West Link and Bandar Tun Razak / Bandar Tasik Selatan (coming from Taman Connaught) as shown below during weekdays, there are cars jumping queues in the morning by going to the front and force themselves to the right lane going to Bandar Tun Razak or to the most left lane going to Tasik Selatan. This act is causing jam backing up to Giant Taman Connaught. 


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We are educated with driving skills and safety but most of us do not follow them or ignore them. We should give indicators when moving lanes and follow the speed limit. We should park at the designated parking areas properly. We should give way to passengers. Perhaps, careful and safely driving should be incorporated in the driving course syllabus. We are only tested on 3 point turn, side parking, hill climbing (manual transmission cars) and street driving. I am not sure whether the new syllabus for automatic cars will include the hill climbing test. 

Please improve our road manners, people. Thank you.

Happy Driving.

Cheers,

Roger TJ Koo