Kota Kinabalu: Sabah should take the initiative in developing road safety measures suited to local needs rather than wait for the Federal Government, said transport planning and traffic engineering veteran Allan Wong TL.
“You don’t have to wait for Kuala Lumpur. No need. Sabah boleh. We can do,” he said.
Allan Wong TLHe was speaking during the forum “Road Accidents: Failure of Safety Systems or Deficiencies in Infrastructure Quality” at the Borneo Empowerment in Standards and Transformation (Best) Conference 2026 at the Sabah International Convention Centre (SICC) here, Tuesday.
Wong, who has more than 35 years of civil service experience particularly in transport planning and traffic engineering, said road crashes were multifactorial and seldom occurred purely by chance.
He called for a “paradigm shift” in how road safety was approached, saying attention should extend beyond the conventional factors of road users, vehicles and the road environment.
Decisions made at institutional and policy levels could ultimately shape the safety culture and physical environment experienced by people on the road, he said.
Wong said Sabah could pursue achievable “small wins” as part of the “50 by 30” goal of reducing road fatalities by 50 per cent by 2030.
Instead of looking only at the overall target, authorities could identify a particular high-risk stretch, such as a 50km route with a history of fatal crashes, and set a measurable target to reduce them.
“How do we know where we are progressing if we don’t have data?” he said.
Wong also called for a more structured approach to speed management, citing possible zones of 30, 50, 70 and 90km/h according to the hierarchy and function of individual roads.
“Speed does kill. Speed limits should not merely be numbers displayed on signs.
“But, where appropriate, supported by physical road-design measures that encouraged motorists to travel at the intended speed,” he said.
Wong also advocated the concept of a ‘forgiving road environment’, where infrastructure was designed on the understanding that people would inevitably make mistakes and with the aim of reducing the consequences when they did.
Good infrastructure could substantially reduce risk but could never completely prevent crashes because human decisions would remain a factor, he said.
“There is no guarantee, but what you can do is best practice,” he said.
Wong also supported refresher training for motorists, saying obtaining a driving licence did not necessarily mean a person would remain a safe driver throughout his or her life.
He said driving schools should help motorists understand the relationship between transport infrastructure and how new road features should be used, while vehicle distributors could do more to educate buyers about the potential consequences of misusing increasingly powerful vehicles.
He also emphasised the importance of institutional capacity, including having the right people and resources, developing individual and organisational capability, securing adequate funding and making use of mentoring, benchmarking and road-user feedback.
Wong said road traffic regulations also needed to keep pace with changes in vehicles, technology and infrastructure, and called for stronger interaction between Sabah and the national level when such rules were reviewed.
He said he had raised the need to review road traffic rules dating from 1957 since 1999 and believed Sabah had not been sufficiently involved in a more recent review effort.
Wong hoped recommendations emerging from Best Conference 2026 would be presented to the government and followed through rather than ending when the conference concluded.
Lillian GungatUniversiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) Associate Professor Lillian Gungat said a preventive approach also meant acting on warning signs before a fatal crash occurred.
“There may not be a fatal accident at a junction yet, but every day we may see vehicles speeding, unsafe behaviour by drivers or pedestrians, and near-misses.
“We don’t need to wait for an accident to happen before suggesting what can be done to prevent it,” she said.
Lillian said having large amounts of accident data alone was insufficient because how the information was interpreted was equally important.
She cited the example of one road recording 100 accidents and another 20, saying it would be wrong to immediately conclude the first was more dangerous without considering how many vehicles used each road.
“If the first road carries 10 times more vehicles every day, then we need to look at the actual level of risk,” she said.
Researchers therefore needed to examine accident patterns alongside traffic exposure, speed, road conditions, weather and the types of road users involved, she said.
Lillian said research for Sabah should also be localised to the State’s circumstances and translated into practical interventions rather than remaining confined to academic journals.
She said UMS researchers had shared research data with Public Works Department (PWD), allowing engineers to interpret technical findings and translate them into information that could be understood and applied by road users and authorities.
“The key word is collaboration.
“Data helps us identify risk, human factors help us identify behaviour through research, and collaboration turns this knowledge into action,” she added.
She said researchers could identify patterns such as repeated speeding, engineers could examine road design and conditions, police could assess behaviour and compliance, while local authorities and policymakers could determine the appropriate intervention.
Lee Tet FonPerunding Tet Fon PEPC Director Lee Tet Fon, who is also a former Kota Kinabalu City Hall (DBKK) Engineering Department Director, said road safety similarly had to be treated as a shared responsibility supported by good governance, sound policies, quality infrastructure and proper maintenance.
He said engineers worked on the principle that humans made mistakes and were vulnerable to surrounding conditions, making safety the first consideration when determining which elements should be prioritised in road design.
He emphasised that resources inevitably affected what could be provided and, where funding was limited, some features might have to be prioritised or implemented in phases.
“If resources are not a problem, then you can have an ideal engineering design incorporating all the road safety systems,” Lee said.
He further emphasised that road shoulders served more than an emergency stopping function, as they supported the pavement structure, helped restrain lateral forces and assisted drainage to prevent water saturation from weakening the road foundation.
Lee said good road safety systems and quality infrastructure had to complement each other, alongside enforcement where road-user behaviour remained a problem.
