• Police to nab illegal racers after identifying the ‘rat holes’ they use to avoid being caught.
• Highway authorities to fix fences to stop motorcyclists from escaping.
• JPJ and police team up to conduct joint road blocks. 
• Over 170,000 summons have been issued in just 3 months.

According to a report by The Star Metro, the Selangor police have upped their focus on nabbing Mat Rempit’s (Malaysian for street racers). And they plan to begin doing so by locating all narrow roads used by these racers as escape routes from housing areas to highways and vice versa.

These escape routes, dubbed by the Selangor traffic chief Supt Kamaludin Mohamad, as ‘rat holes’ are used by the racers to quickly evade police roadblocks around housing areas and on major highways.

To avoid getting caught, these illegal racers will break certain sections of fences along the highways.

According to the report published online, the traffic chief was quoted as saying, “We have informed the highway concessionaires – Besraya and Kesas – to repair damaged fences along the highway.”

The chief was also quoted saying that the police are planning to use a new technology to catch the culprits during the next raid, but the report made no mention of what the new technology is.

He did however remind the public that Selangor has an ongoing campaign called Ops Zero Tolerance in all 15 districts in Selangor, and which started on October 14 last year.

Both the police and the Road Transport Department (JPJ) are working together to curb illegal activities through regular raids and joints roadblocks, the latter can usually be seen operating at the entrance to major highways like the NKVE.

The chief also added that from October 14 last year to February 6 this year the police has issued summonses to 171,619 motorcycles. This consists of 54,507 summons to riders without a valid license, 10,751 for not having a road tax, 7,688 for not wearing a helmet, and 98,673 for causing obstruction.

Selangor JPJ director Nazli Md Taib said that in its three operations in the past two weeks, 1,900 motorcycles were checked and 553 of them were summoned.

Bikes Republic welcomes this move by the authorities as there are just too many motorcyclists with no regard for the law. It was just last week that a father and what we assume to be his daughter was seen riding on the NKVE without a helmet. We have reached a dangerous level of ignorance and it is good that the authorities are stepping up their game.

Story and image source: The Star