A driver with 29 prior violations remained licensed until the collision came
On a winding mountain road in Genting Highlands, a chain-reaction crash involving two tour buses and a civilian vehicle injured six people and surfaced a quieter, more troubling story: a 55-year-old commercial driver with 29 prior traffic summonses had been permitted to carry 74 passengers into the highlands and back. The collision itself lasted seconds; the conditions that made it possible had been accumulating for years. What the wreckage left behind was not only minor injuries and damaged vehicles, but a pointed question about whether licensing systems are designed to prevent harm — or merely to record it.
- A bus driver with 29 prior traffic violations lost control on a mountain bend, triggering a three-vehicle pileup that overturned one bus and sent six people to hospital.
- Seventy-four passengers — mostly foreign workers returning from a holiday — were aboard the two tour buses when the cascade of impacts unfolded at kilometre 16 of Jalan Genting Highlands.
- Drug and alcohol screening returned negative, leaving reckless driving as the sole explanation and prompting arrest under the Road Transport Act 1987.
- The six injured — three Bangladeshi workers, two Nepali workers, and one local driver — escaped with minor injuries, though the margin between this outcome and a far worse one felt disturbingly narrow.
- The case has reignited public concern over enforcement gaps: a documented pattern of violations spanning decades did not trigger license revocation, and it took a crash to finally remove this driver from the road.
At 5:09 on a Friday evening, police received reports of a collision on Jalan Genting Highlands, a mountain road leading toward the capital. Two tour buses and a Perodua Aruz had come together in a sequence of impacts that would injure six people and raise uncomfortable questions about how a driver with nearly three decades of traffic violations remained licensed to carry passengers.
The driver was 55 years old and had accumulated 29 traffic summonses over his driving history — a record that, in retrospect, reads as a long-ignored warning. He was operating one of two tour buses ferrying foreign workers home after a holiday in Genting Highlands, with 38 passengers aboard his vehicle and 36 on the second bus. At kilometre 16, navigating a bend, he lost control. His bus struck the rear of the Aruz ahead, then collided with the second tour bus behind him. That second bus skidded, left the road, and overturned. In moments, the orderly flow of traffic had become wreckage.
Six people were injured: three Bangladeshi workers, two Nepali workers, and the local driver of the Aruz. All sustained minor injuries and were transported to hospitals in Selayang and Kuala Lumpur. A urine screening test returned negative for drugs and alcohol. Police determined the cause was reckless driving and detained the man under Section 43(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987.
What lingered beyond the immediate facts was the harder question: how had a man with 29 prior summonses been permitted to operate a commercial vehicle carrying dozens of people? The licensing system had not intervened. The enforcement apparatus had not acted. It took a collision, six injured passengers, and two damaged buses to finally stop him — and the question now is whether that represents a failure of the system, or simply a reflection of how it was always designed to function.
At 5:09 on a Friday evening, police received word of a collision unfolding on Jalan Genting Highlands, a mountain road carrying traffic toward the capital. Two tour buses and a Perodua Aruz had come together in a sequence of impacts that would leave six people hurt and raise uncomfortable questions about how a driver with nearly three decades of traffic violations remained behind the wheel of a vehicle carrying dozens of passengers.
The driver in question was 55 years old. According to Bentong District Police Chief Superintendent Zaiham Mohd Kahar, this man had accumulated 29 traffic summonses across his driving history—a record that should have registered as a warning sign to anyone reviewing his file. On this particular afternoon, he was operating one of two tour buses ferrying foreign workers home after a holiday in Genting Highlands. The first bus carried 38 passengers. The second carried 36. Between them, they held 74 people whose safety depended on the judgment of a driver whose judgment, the evidence would suggest, had long been in question.
What happened at kilometre 16 of the road was a cascade. The first bus, driven by the 55-year-old, lost control as it navigated a bend. It struck the rear of the Perodua Aruz, a civilian vehicle traveling ahead. The impact was violent enough that the bus then collided with the back of the second tour bus. That second bus, struck from behind, lost its grip on the road, skidded across the left shoulder, and overturned. The first bus skidded to the right. In moments, the orderly flow of traffic had become wreckage.
Police arrived to find six people injured. Three were Bangladeshi workers. Two were Nepali workers. One was the driver of the Perodua Aruz, a local citizen. All six had sustained minor injuries. They were transported to Selayang Hospital and Kuala Lumpur Hospital for treatment. No one died. The buses, carrying 74 people, had been spared a worse outcome by margins that felt uncomfortably thin.
The arrested driver submitted to a urine screening test. The results came back negative—no drugs, no alcohol. What remained was the simple fact of his driving. Police determined that reckless operation of the vehicle had caused the collision. He was detained for investigation under Section 43(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987, a statute designed to address exactly this kind of dangerous conduct. The case would proceed from there.
But the detail that lingered was the one that raised the harder question: how had a man with 29 prior traffic summonses been permitted to operate a commercial vehicle carrying dozens of people? The summonses indicated a pattern, a history of violations spanning years. Yet the licensing system had not intervened. The enforcement apparatus had not removed him from the road. It took a collision, six injured people, and two overturned buses to finally stop him. The question now was whether that was a failure of the system, or simply how the system worked.
Citações Notáveis
The bus driver had 29 traffic summonses for various offences— Superintendent Zaiham Mohd Kahar, Bentong District Police Chief
The accident was caused by the 55-year-old driver of the first tour bus, who was believed to have driven recklessly until he lost control— Superintendent Zaiham Mohd Kahar
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Twenty-nine summonses is a remarkable number. How does someone accumulate that many and still hold a commercial license?
That's the question everyone should be asking. The summonses suggest a pattern of disregard—not a single bad day, but years of violations. Yet the system didn't intervene until people were hurt.
Do we know what kinds of violations they were?
The report doesn't specify. They're listed as "various offences." That's frustratingly vague, but it tells you something: even the police chief's statement treats them as a known fact, not a surprise. This driver's record was there to be found.
The drug test was negative. So this wasn't about impairment in the moment.
No. This was about a driver who had demonstrated poor judgment repeatedly over time, and who on this particular bend, at this particular moment, lost control. The question is whether anyone was watching the pattern.
Seventy-four people on those buses. That's a lot of lives dependent on one person's attention.
It is. And most of them were foreign workers—people who may not have had much choice about which bus to take, or much recourse if something went wrong. The Perodua driver was just unlucky, in the wrong place when the first bus came loose.
What happens to him now?
The driver faces investigation under the Road Transport Act. Whether that leads to prosecution, whether his license is revoked, whether the system changes—that's still unfolding. But the collision happened. Six people were hurt. That's the fact that can't be undone.