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From Rahman Hussin
The road transport department (JPJ) has once again extended its summons discount of a flat-rate RM150, this time until the end of 2025.
More than two million unpaid summonses are on offer, regardless of whether the offence was reckless driving, speeding, or running a red light.
On the surface, the discount offer looks like a case of administrative efficiency. In reality, it reveals a deep flaw in how road safety enforcement is approached in Malaysia.
Let’s not sugar-coat this: traffic summonses are meant to be penalties. They are the legal system’s way of telling a driver, “You’ve done something dangerous, and it has consequences.”
But when these offences are bundled into a blanket discount, it turns the entire mechanism into a collection tool, not a safety instrument.
It sends the wrong message. It tells drivers that if you wait long enough, your mistakes will cost less. That the seriousness of the offence doesn’t matter as much as the timing of your payment.
And this leniency comes at a very real cost. In 2024, Malaysia recorded 585,729 road accidents. That’s an average of 1,729 accidents every single day. The death toll reached 5,939 by year’s end; that’s about 14 people dying every day.
A death every 2 hours
One Malaysian life was lost on the road every one hour and 56 minutes, This is not just a statistic. This is a public health crisis.
It is especially deadly for motorcyclists: over 4,000 lives lost last year were motorcycle riders or pillion passengers, most of them between 16 and 35 years old. These are young lives, often breadwinners, wiped out in crashes that could often have been prevented.
When we reduce enforcement to a year-end payment drive, we are not making roads safer. We’re making enforcement optional. We are teaching repeat offenders that they can game the system, break the rules, ignore the summons, and just pay when it’s cheap.
This approach doesn’t just fail to deter. It encourages delay, building a culture where the law is flexible for those who can wait it out. And in the end, it is the law-abiding drivers, the ones who pay their fines on time, who follow the rules, who are made to feel like fools for playing fair.
UK takes tough line
Contrast this with how things are done in the UK for example. There, enforcement is structured, consistent, and escalating. Speeding violations are categorised based on severity, with clear consequences ranging from fines and demerit points to licence disqualification.
Added licence demerit points go along with fixed penalty notices for mobile phone use, careless driving, and other serious offences. If you don’t pay, the amount increases. It gets registered as a legal debt. If you still don’t pay, enforcement agents (bailiffs) can be sent. The system doesn’t forget, and it doesn’t forgive recklessness.
And they’re going further. From August, AI-powered cameras will be deployed to track repeat offenders across jurisdictions. A driver’s entire record will matter; not just isolated incidents. The penalties will escalate with each repeated offence: from warnings to heavy fines and eventual licence reviews or suspension.
On top of that, all new cars in the UK must now have speed limiter systems that rely on GPS and traffic sign recognition. This isn’t about being harsh. It’s about being serious. Enforcement is treated as a tool to prevent death, not raise revenue.
The public knows that if you break the law, you can’t hide behind time, geography, or discounts.
Malaysian waiting game
Meanwhile, in Malaysia, enforcement is reactive, fragmented, and seasonal. We wait until the numbers pile up. Then we offer rebates, discounts. Then we move on. The cycle repeats. But the crashes keep coming. The deaths don’t stop. The families keep grieving.
We do not need harsher laws. What we need is a system that values consistency, certainty, and consequence. When a driver breaks the law, there should be a clear series of actions, not a window of negotiation. Enforcement should not be a collection drive that ramps up near election season or fiscal deadlines. It should be embedded into everyday governance.
We must remember that these traffic laws were created to save lives. If they’re not being enforced, or worse, if they’re being commodified, we are betraying the very reason they exist.
The public should not stay silent. We should all be asking: why are traffic rules treated like negotiable debts? Why is JPJ, a body meant to protect road users, looking more like a collector of unpaid invoices? Who benefits from these discount schemes? And who suffers from them?
We cannot afford to normalise leniency in a country where nearly 6,000 people died on the road last year. We cannot keep reducing deadly mistakes to discounted transactions. It is time to restore meaning to our enforcement system. Not with fear but with clarity, certainty, and consistency.
Because in the end, we’re not just paying off summonses. We’re paying for our silence. And far too many are paying with their lives.
Rahman Hussin is the chief strategy officer for My Mobility Vision, a transport think tank.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
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