KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 6 — Continuous monitoring by the federal traffic police over the first three quarters of the year have successfully reduced the number of road fatalities, DCP Datuk Mohd Fuad Abd Latiff said yesterday.

In his last press conference as federal traffic police chief, he said although the number of accidents have increased by 4,116 from the 357,292 accidents recorded between January and September last year, the police have reduced the number of road fatalities and deaths by 206 and 198, respectively.

Mohd Fuad said continuous road safety operations, like Ops Selamat and Ops Roda, have helped in bringing down the number of deaths. 

He said accidents involving motorcyclists were still their biggest concern although there was a reduction by 125 accidents as compared with last year. 

“Of the 4,940 deaths recorded in the first nine months, 3,098 accidents involved motorcyclists while 1,007 involved drivers.”

Mohd Fuad said based on operations conducted this year, Johor tops the list with the highest number of road fatalities.

This was followed by Kedah, with an increase of 1,214 accidents while Selangor saw a spike of 917 this year.

“Accidents occurred in areas where population is dense and we are looking at how we can further reduce the number of road accidents.”

Mohd Fuad said the highest occurrences were on urban and city roads, with an increase of 3,716 cases from 152,613 last year. 

“We also see an increase in state roads, but a reduction of three per cent was recorded on federal roads.”

He added that police have also managed to resolve 19 per cent of the arrest warrants issued to road users, after launching Ops Warta (Ops Waran Tangkap) earlier this year.

“A total of 904,242 arrest warrants were resolved between 2014 and 2015, leaving another one million yet to be paid by  traffic offenders.”

This reduction, he said, is the result of aggressive enforcement of Ops Warta throughout the year. “We look forward to resolving more arrest warrants when COPS 3 Traffic  Project starts.”

The project will automatise arrest warrant registration through an optical character recognition where a warrant issued can be checked and printed on-the-go nationwide. 

Mohd Fuad said they expect to further reduce the number of road accidents and fatalities by two per cent in the final quarter. 

“Our goal is to save lives on the road, and we will conduct operations to ensure road users obey traffic rules — which indirectly reduces the number of road mishaps.”

At the end of the press conference, Mohd Fuad introduced his new successor, SAC Mahamad Akhir Darus.