Coming from a town as far north as Alor Setar, the main transportation then and still is now is via bus to the city, Kuala Lumpur. I suppose the more effluent among the community would drop the idea of using the express bus services. The use of bus services escalated when the grand highways were built. I have used the bus service many times till one fateful day about 4 years ago. I was to attend a Paediatric Surgery Conference in Singapore and my boss who paid for the pre-congress workshop was unable to make it for that workshop. So he offered his place to me and I gladly took the offer as it was a hands-on workshop on the role and use of FAST( Focused Abdominal Sonogram in Trauma). So I bought a midnight bus leaving to Singapore. It was no ordinary bus and was on of those luxury comfort buses. The bus was full. I was seated right at the back. It was comfortable and all of us were fast asleep. Bang! Screeeeeeech!
I felt my limp body jolting towards the seat in front and my face slammed across the handle bar on the seat in front. Thank god my specs were in my shirt as I always do so when I sleep. The next thing, I felt a soreness over the eyebrow and my nose. It felt wet but there was no blood! Bruised! Damn! Then all of a sudden a child screams and her mother screams together. That woke me up to reality as I was still questioning my senses. It was all dark. There were no street lights or highway lights! I looked in front and two things caught my eyes immediately. There was huge hole in front of the bus – half of the bus across the driver side was missing upto the 2nd row of seats. The other was the screaming lady with her child was rushing to the back in panic. I had to think – and think fast! Everybody else was still in shock and slumped back to their seats in a daze! I quickly pushed open the air-vent on the roof so as to allow some light to come in and air to flow. Another passenger followed me for the vents in front. I confronted the screaming lady and got her to go back to her seat. Then I searched for the emergency exit. Goodness despite after having travelled by bus many times, I took a long time before I realised that the exit was easily 6 feet above road and thus one needed to jump off the exit. Well we managed to evacuate all the passengers. The worst case was of a young chinese lady who was thrown off her sit and landed at the front beside the driver just inches from the large crater formed on the bus. The bus driver was in tears supporting this lady saying sorry. I questioned him further and he said he dozed off and that there was no co-driver. Bloody hell! No co-driver but have a waitress for what? No special services rendered either! Anyway, the first thing the young lady said was she could not move her legs. I pinched her leg and her negative response told me immediately that she had suffered a spinal cord injury. We managed to get her out of the bus lying flat on her back. I remember vividly telling the other helpers to keep her flat. As I exited the bus and went around looking for her, I find her propped up and the police had already stopped a vehicle to get her to the hospital. As I was talking to her, she was lifted off and placed in the car with no regards to her spine. I was furious as I also told them to wait for the ambulance but it fell on deaf ears. The ambulance came very much later when almost nobody was there anymore.

Now that was 2003. This is 2008 and yet we still have the same thing occuring every year only this time it happened in succession and involved deaths. Why do we, Malaysia and Malaysian always wait till something happens to then only pick the problem and rectify it.

Only now they decide to go after the owners of the bus company who try to rake in huge profits by not having a co-driver for a long distance drive. Then they don’t bother to have their vehicles inspected. They don’t bother to screen the drivers they hire. I wonder whether any life time compensation was handed to the young chinese lady. There is still no safety belts for buses. So has bus rides ever got any safer?