COVER FEATURE
INGENIEUR
COVER FEATURE
INGENIEUR
End-of-Life Vehicles Policy: Exploring the Human Factors and Impact to Road Safety
By Zulhaidi Mohd Jawi, Iskandar Abdul Hamid & Mohd Rasid Osman Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research( MIROS)
The End-of-Life Vehicles or ELV policy has yet to begin in Malaysia and the Government is still looking for the best solution to complete the life cycle of cars. The National Automotive Policy( NAP), which was first introduced in 2006( NAP-2006) by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry( MITI) and has been reviewed in 2009( NAP-2009) and 2014( NAP-2014), can perhaps provide some reference regarding the effort to put the ELV policy into the system – or Malaysia’ s‘ automotive ecosystem’. NAP-2006 had six main objectives and it did not cover ELV specifically, even though the words“ sustainable” and“ consumer interest” were mentioned. Meanwhile, in NAP-2009, ELV became one of the policies under‘ Section E: Efforts for Increased Safety’ where the Ministry of Transport( MOT) was stated as one of the key players to build the ELV framework.
However, that specific item was taken off from the NAP-2009 framework shortly after the announcement due to public disapproval regarding the measure. It was speculated that the‘ vehicle age limit’ hit a sensitive chord amongst car owners. In the latest NAP-2014, the measure was shifted to the Voluntary Vehicle Inspection Programme( VVIP) under the‘ Section F: Safety,
Security and Environment’ – and item number 43 of the MITI document clearly mentioned that“ this is not meant to scrap cars on the basis of the age of the vehicles”. The above-mentioned thrust( Section F) also explained measures related to VVIP and environmental concerns, among which are“ promoting the inspection of vehicles aged five years and above” and“ to adopt the global 3R( Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) standard as Malaysian Standard( MS)”.
Researchers at MIROS, especially from the Vehicle Safety and Biomechanics Research Centre( VSB), are interested in this specific issue for two reasons: firstly for road safety and secondly to assist the parent ministry( MOT) by providing insights and developing the ELV framework. The research team has established an on-going study called the‘ automotive ecosystem’ study – to represent the interaction between the industry and consumers( car owners) in the life cycle of cars. A few studies have been conducted by local universities on the subject( 6R – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, Remanufacture, Redesign), but they have so far yielded insufficient data as evidenced by the country still lacking a deeper understanding of ELV-related technical and human factors.
20 VOL 70 APRIL-JUNE 2017