Transport Commissioner asks Public Light Bus trade leaders to review driving safety (with photo)

     The Commissioner for Transport, Mr Alan Wong, today (November 14) called leaders of the Public Light Bus (PLB) trade to a meeting to express the Administration's concern about two traffic accidents in Sha Tau Kok and Southern District yesterday (November 13), leaving two dead and many injured.

     Pointing out that the high accident rates had always been the Government's concern, Mr Wong said the Government was tackling the problem in a three pronged approach: legislation, publicity and education, monitoring and enforcement. 

     "On legislation, the government has introduced a new legislation to require all PLBs registered after August 1, 2004 to be equipped with passenger seat belts and compulsory wearing of it when fitted. The government has also recently introduced a revised legislation for enactment from January 1, 2006 to increase the penalty of red light jumping by increasing DOP to 5 points, and fines will be increased to $600."

     "From April this year, a new requirement that all vehicles are asked to be fitted with speed display devices was put in place. The device is to facilitate passengers to monitor the speed of the PLB and deter speeding by the driver. We have made this a vehicle licence requirement."

     On publicity and education, Transport Department and the Road Safety Council had a year round series of programmes to enhance PLB safety. In March this year, the PLB trade had adopted a safety charter voluntarily to demonstrate their commitment to enhance road safety awareness and promote safe driving.  

     "We have planned another publicity campaign to enhance PLB safety later in the year to promote driving safety and we will continue to promote safety seat belt," Mr Wong added.

     On monitoring and enforcement, from November this year, all PLBs were requested to display the telephone number of the Transport Complaints Unit (TCU)  so that passengers could make timely complaints against any misbehaviour of the drivers. The Police have been taking actions against driving misbehaviour including speeding and jumping of red lights. The Transport Department was also stepping up the installation of more red light jumping enforcement cameras and speed enforcement cameras.

     In view of the two serious accidents, Mr Wong had expressed his greatest condolences to the families of the dead and the injured. He said, "This afternoon I further requested the PLB trade leaders to conduct a thorough review of their guidelines to drivers to see if there can be further enhancements on road and passenger safety and to minimise the occurrence of any incidents in the future. The leaders agreed at the meeting that they would help distributing leaflets to ask passengers to wear seat belts, to speed up the retrofitting of safety belts on PLBs (on vehicles that is structurally fit), to encourage drivers to attend improvement courses and to review the guidelines for drivers."

     The Transport Department will write to all Green Minibus and Red Minibus operators to draw their attention to the two serious accidents and to consider if they can strengthen the management of their drivers.

     "The trade leaders, in particular the GMB trade leaders, have been reminded of the obligation under the Passenger Service Licence to provide a proper and efficient service to the satisfaction of the Commissioner for Transport at all times during its licensing period," Mr Wong stressed.

     He said, "The Department will continue to work closely with the Police and the trade to enhance safety. I urge members of the public to report their cases to the TCU complaint hotline 2889 9999 or Transport Department hotline 2804 2600 if they observe any misbehaviour of PLB drivers affecting road safety. We will take their reports forward very seriously."

Ends/Monday, November 14, 2005
Issued at HKT 19:58