KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 1, 2009) : The Road Transport Department (RTD) swung into action at the stroke of midnight to enforce the law on vehicle rear seat belts which came into force today and promptly issued 242 summonses for failure to buckle up, at 28 locations nationwide.

Vehicle owners and passengers will be given a six-month grace period up to June 30 when they will only be issued a compound fine of RM300 for not wearing rear seat belts.

From July 1, drivers and passengers caught not using their seat belts would have to pay a fine of up to RM2,000, serve up to one year's jail or both under the Road Transport Act.

Johor had the highest number of offenders at 95 in the RTD operation involving 500 officers which was held from 10pm Wednesday to 2am today, RTD director of enforcement Salim Parlan told Bernama.

He said many rear seat passengers had begun to wear the seat belts, pointing out that in Penang only six summonses were issued for the offence and it reflected the success of the
RTD campaign to encourage rear seat passengers to buckle up.

"Statistics show that yearly almost 300 deaths are recorded because of the complacency of vehicle users who do not wear rear seat belts," Salim said.

The RTD also issued 550 summonses to motorists for not having a driving licence or for having an expired licence while 182 summonses were issued to motorists for having expired road tax and 59 vehicles were confiscated for not having road tax. Seventy-two summonses were issued for use of the High-Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps.

In KEDAH, State RTD director Jaafar Mohamed said summonses were issued to 12 rear seat passengers from not buckling up during an operation in Sungai Petani.

In NEGRI SEMBILAN, State RTD director Kamal Saad said 11 summonses were issued for the offence, and that many motorists and passengers said they were unaware of the law on rear seat belts.

In PERLIS, State RTD chief Abd Rahman Hussain said 12 rear seat passengers were caught for not having buckled up.

In KUALA LUMPUR, Federal traffic police chief SAC II Datuk Abd Aziz Yusof said there will be no special operations or roadblocks mounted to penalise those who do not adhere to the rear seat belt ruling. Instead, enforcement will be done in daily routine operations.

He said owners of cars registered from 1995 without the belts mountings have been given a three year grace period to retrofit the rear seatbeats. He said although cars built before 1995 are exempted from the new law, he advised owners to consider installing the rear seat belts.

Abd Aziz said the decision on whether the driver or passenger of a vehicle should be issued the fine for the offence is still being studied with other relevant agencies.

No figures on police enforcement were immediately available.

Despite months of publicity over the rear seat belt ruling, many passengers have either forgotten that the new law is now in force or are refusing to abide by it.

theSun did a random survey of 100 cars with rear seat passengers and found that in more than half of the cars, the rear passengers had not buckled up.

While a big fine would do the trick eventually, education about the danger of not belting up seems to be lacking.

Car owner Ivan Tong said: "After all it is a new law, you can't blame people for forgetting to belt up. I think it's an annoyance however good it is, but we'll see how good it is enforced."

Ung Han Pin admitted that he liked to "move freely" at the back seat instead of belting up.

He however agreed the law is to prevent more fatalities in accidents.