Motorcycle-related accidents kill 300 people on average every month in the capital, according to a recent study conducted by a university.
That is equal to one person dying every few hours in Jakarta simply for being too close to a motorcycle.
How can this be?
There are at least eight million people living in Jakarta, with a large number of commuters also traveling into the capital on a daily basis for work. These people use various forms of transportation, including motorcycles.
It has been estimated that 3.2 million people use a motorcycle in Jakarta as their primary form of transportation.
Assuming the 300 people who die in motorcycle accidents each month are motorcycle users, divide this figure by the total number of motorcycle users and you will see that the death toll currently stands at around 0.01 percent.
This figure seems quite realistic, considering I have only ever seen one major motorcycle accident in the city.
It was during the Idul Fitri mass exodus, when millions of Indonesians were traveling back to their hometowns.
In the middle of the night while driving my own motorcycle down a quiet street, I passed an accident victim being carried away.
His body was limp and his Honda Tiger motorcycle lay smashed into several pieces on the pavement. I automatically prayed that if he had died, he had gone to a better place.
Being a motorcyclist myself, I assumed he had been traveling too fast and lost control of his motorcycle.
But why do motorcyclists always drive too fast? Why do they often break traffic rules too?
The excuse is simple enough: Because we can.
I used to drive a car before I started driving a motorcycle and was thankful that my Honda Tiger never let me down when I needed to quickly arrive at a press conference.
But it took me a while to get used to the added threat of being involved in a crash.
If motorcyclists travel too slow, they are wasting their time. However, if they travel too fast, anything could happen.
Driving a motorcycle is a different feeling compared to driving a large jeep or small sedan. When driving a motorcycle, you do not have to constantly worry about your expensive car getting a scratch on it.
Your field of vision also expands with no dashboard and no back-seat passengers. You can do anything you want because the risks you take are your own responsibility.
In this dog-eat-dog city, you always want to look the fiercest.
But excuses do not justify deaths and the city administration should really work harder to prevent motorcycle-related deaths from increasing.
In 2007, the administration introduced several new rules for motorcyclists, including the fact they could only drive in the left lane of most roads and had to always leave their lights on.
These rules seemed to work, with motorcycle-related fatalities decreasing significantly at first.
However, many motorcyclists seem to no longer be following the rules and can often be seem zipping around the streets at high speeds without helmets.
Ironically, according to the figures, some 1,035 Jakarta residents decide to become motorcyclists each day, which surely contributes to the risks posed.
The amount of commuters in the city also contributes to the number of accidents.
As of 2000, 94 percent of the city's main roads were being used above their capacity, according to city transportation agency data.
There are no more streets in the capital not burdened by traffic jams.
The amount of private vehicles on Jakarta's streets has more than doubled since 2002, with streets being expanded at a rate of just 1 percent annually.
But driving should be about more than just congestion and public transportation systems. First and foremost, it should be safe.
If the authorities refuse to punish those who break the rules on the roads, with many officers still preferring to take bribes, 300 extra people will die before their time every month. -- Andra Wisnu
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