The banning of heavy vehicles from the right-hand-side lane on highways will not cause added congestion or increase traffic risks, the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) has said. This is because the number of lanes on highways remained the same, with the only difference being how they were used, said LLM central region director Mohammed Ridzuan Jahidin, the New Straits Times reported.
Previously, most heavy vehicles would stick to the left lane and avoid the right lane. However, when a slower-moving lorry is in the left lane, another lorry behind it would try to overtake. Since lorries are generally slow, this would cause congestion behind them, and this is why we are designating the right lane strictly for overtaking. Lorries can still use this lane when necessary, and in hilly areas, they can use the climbing lane as well,” Ridzuan said.
This comes after lorry associations were reported as saying that banning heavy vehicles from the rightmost lane on highways is not practical, subsequent to the Malaysian government’s decision to enforce the ban on heavy vehicles from the lane intended for fastest-moving traffic.
The rule banning buses and lorries from the rightmost lane was gazetted in 2015, but had yet to be enforced, transport ministry secretary-general Datuk Jana Santhiran Muniayan said earlier.
“Under this rule, lorries and buses must stay in the left lane and are not allowed to speed. If they need to overtake, they may move to the second lane and then return to the left. However, they are strictly prohibited from using the third lane at any time. Therefore, we will resubmit this proposal to the minister to ensure its enforcement for heavy vehicles on highways,” Jana Santhiran said in an earlier interview.
The move to enforce the ban is one of the five measures that will be implemented to tighten regulations on commercial vehicles. The other regulatory enhancements include mandatory speed control device installation, GPS tracking, high-speed weigh-in-motion (HS-WIM) detectors at 11 highway locations, and additional automated enforcement system (AES) cameras.
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