Researcher at Center for Transportation and Logistics Studies, UGM, Hendra Edi Gunawan, S.T., M.Sc, said that there are three main factors of road accidents, caused by humans, vehicles, and roads/environment. The human factor is the dominant one, 92%, followed by vehicles, 5%, and roads/environment 3%.
According to Hendra, the number of accidents in Indonesia is high enough. In 2004 there were 30,464 people killed on the road, severe injuries 450,000 people, minor injuries 2,100,000. "PDO" reached 13,515,000 units so the total loss was up to Rp41 trillion.
The data in 2004 showed that there were 10 traffic accidents every 1 hour while every 30 minutes 1 was killed. "These numbers increased in 2006 where every 15 minutes one person was severely injured and every 10 minutes one person suffered minor injuries due to traffic accidents. The state economic loss reached up to Rp91 trillion," he said in Grha Sabha Pramana on Thursday (15/7) during the seminar on "Driving Safety on the Road".
Accidents that are purely ‘ill-fated’ is 1% because all systems have run ideally. While 99% are caused by one or more failures in the vehicle’s function, human error, or road infrastructure.
Despite the very high rate of accidents, Hendra said that safety does not mean no accidents, but the absence of danger. Whilst on the road, drivers are expected to avoid dangerous situation. "Giving safe feeling is very good, this can be shown by giving priority to pedestrians and create the image of safety in one region. This will become an attraction of the city, particularly that Yogyakarta is known as a student and tourism city," he ended.
The seminar held during the Research Week 2010 presented two other speakers, AKBP Affandi from Yogyakarta Regional Police Office and Maryanto from Astra Honda.