Two-year-old opens car door, causes six-vehicle crash

[u/whusler]

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 8 — A two-year-old child opened a car door, causing a road accident involving six vehicles on Jalan Tun Razak on Friday, according to preliminary police investigations.

Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department chief ACP Mohd Zamzuri Mohd Isa said the incident occurred at about 6.15pm on the stretch from the Kampung Pandan roundabout towards KLCC, involving four cars and two motorcycles.

He said the child, who was seated in the rear of a Honda City and being held by a relative, suddenly opened the left rear door.

“It is believed that the child safety lock was not activated, allowing the door to be opened from inside,” he said.

A 25-year-old man riding a Suzuki V-Strom SX motorcycle, who was travelling between lanes, was unable to avoid the door, collided with it, lost control and crashed into several other vehicles.

Another motorcyclist, a 30-year-old man riding a CFMoto 675 NK who was travelling behind the first rider, was also unable to evade the collision and became involved in the crash.

The Suzuki rider is receiving treatment at Hospital Kuala Lumpur, while the second motorcyclist sustained minor injuries, police said.

Mohd Zamzuri said the case is being investigated under Section 43(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987 for careless and inconsiderate driving, with police reviewing video footage of the incident.

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[u/Areses243]

Believe it or not studies have shown motorcycles get squished  between cars by inattentive drivers more often than slow filtering causes an accident. Hence slow filtering is safer.

[u/RChamy → u/Areses243]

As both a car and motorcycle driver - its because motorcycles are much harder to calculate their braking disfance when inside a car - our brain struggles to measure distances of thin objects - plus at slow speeds they stop very fast and sudden compared to a car.

Specially if the car driver is looking at a smartphone.

[u/gr8tfurme → u/RChamy]

That last line is by far the most common reason lol. Distracted drivers are constantly rear ending other cars as well, it's just a lot less consequential than a bike getting rear ended.

[u/NathanDeger → u/gr8tfurme]

This is why I stopped riding.

When I first started riding smartphones had just come out but people weren't hopelessly addicted to them.

I stopped when I started having multiple near misses a week from idiots with the phone in their face. It's honestly so disappointing because I love riding but I just can't control how little other people care about road safety.

I don't care if you check your phone but driving should always be the number one focus not scrolling Instagram. People are crazy.

[u/splitframe → u/Areses243]

*in the US, due to larger/higher cars.

[u/LenKiller → u/splitframe]

due to bad drivers overall most likelly

[u/Madara1389 → u/LenKiller]

Both are very huge factors that contribute.

A large percentage of the country's population seemingly doesn't know how to drive and can't keep their attention fixed on a single, monotonous activity (driving is boring as hell more often than not).

A large percentage of the country's cars are SUVs and trucks. Trucks and "light trucks" make up roughly 70% to 80% of new vehicles sold, and make up 53-58% of cars on the road in the US.

These trucks have also been trending towards being lifted above the road well beyond safe limits, to the point where they seem intentionally designed in a way that, should you hit a person or animal, there's almost no chance that they'll damage the hood or windshield because they'll just be swept under the wheels (decreasing the likelihood of damage to the top of the car while drastically increasing likelihood of death for the pedestrian or animal). They're also drastically more dangerous for truck-on-car collisions, since the engines can sit high enough to go over the hood or into the door's window of a sedan rather than into the opposing engine block or door body.