Help Nian Ning’s Family, Fight With Them.

Latest update at 2.17pm 30/1/2008:

THE PETITION IS UP! GO TO BUSCRASHNOMORE.BLOGSPOT.COM. Again, please tell everyone about it. Put on bulletins, forums, emails…anything. Just spread it. Ning and the others died for us to realize that this has to stop. Please help us push for safer bus rides for you, me and everyone else.

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UPDATE 30/10/08: The petition is up on a proper blog but some tweaking is being done. Though the ideas below are very very good, but for fear of disappointments, we are going to appear as a solid voice of thousands to insist on a change based on the authorities’ own initiatives.

Email from Jason and co: “The demands are rather general because demands which are too ambitious might disappoint us. Hopefully they can set up a body made up of professionals to study this problem and find solutions to solve it. We give them a chance to use their own discretion to fix this problem once and for all rather than dictating to them the steps they must take (in which they will likely ignore).”

Again, watch this space, we will try to make the blog as informative as possible, as collective as possible before going public with it. Thanks guys. I wonder if Nian Ning would’ve been happy to know she is worthy of such humongous efforts and concerns. I’m sure she would have been proud. I know I would!

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Update: I realize that most of us who fear for future occurrences of bus crashes are usually students. Please come up with ideas for the petition and leave it in the comments. I will try to work on it and Jason has mentioned that Ning’s friends are planning to work on it too. We’ll be in touch. Please spare a thought and think about how we can stop this once and for all. As we’re still deciding exactly how to go about this petition, please leave your email address in the comments so that when we wrap everything up, we’ll get you in on it.

Chung Lern smsed me this afternoon saying that the family will be taking action against Konsortium and he asked me to help propagate this message to the entire blogosphere. I will try my very best.

I think at this rate, all of us have pretty much given up on the government and their so called efforts to stop bus crashes from happening.

Bus crashes will continue to happen because buses, I believe, are being subbed out to subcontractors and there would be great difficulty in pinpointing who is managing all these buses. When you have so many levels of ‘management’, bribery happens and even if the authorities have nothing to do with it, it’s not easy for them to stop it.

I fear to think about what will happen this Chinese New Year season.

But I, as one person of many, believe that the bus company should take responsibility. They have not shown any remorse or taken any initiative over the incident, as reported in the papers today.

After a thorough comb through of news articles, blogs and forums, the moments before the bus landed on its side continues to haunt me.

According to the survivors, the top deck was swaying left and right as the driver was going really fast. Some passengers at the bottom deck saw the driver smsing a lot and driving really fast in the heavy rain. After awhile the passengers felt something amiss and saw the bus driver STAND UP suddenly(while the bus was moving!) and split seconds later, the passengers screamed really loudly and the bus spun three times, hit the divider and careened to the opposite highway where an oncoming MPV crashed into the back of the bus. Nian Ning and Mohd Zailani were sitting at the back row. I’m not sure about the other chinese boy who also passed away. But that’s what I’ve gathered. The passengers of the MPV only suffered minor injuries. To add insult to the injury, the bus driver only sustained a broken right leg. I’m curious to know what is happening to him now though.

If you’ve yet to read about the issue, please go to these links:

Family mourns loss of beautiful, intelligent go-getter

Bus crash: Driver had 13 outstanding summonses

2 killed, 24 hurt in bus crash

A facebook group has also been set up in memory of her:

In Loving Memory of Lee Nian Neng(1987-2008).

Please post this on your blog now to help:

Chung Lern and Nian Ning’s families would like all families and friends of the victims, dead or alive, in the Slim River Bus Crash to come forward and join them in taking action against the bus company. Stand up to seek justice for these three innocent individuals, who were all so young and full of life.

If you have a blog, please call out to ANYONE who

knows someone who survived or did not survive

the crash to come forward to join the Lee family.

Make a huge difference, make a huge fuss.

For now, you may contact Lee Chung Lern at chunglern@gmail.com or preferably on his handphone at 012-6670368.

A petition will always come into good use in times like these. We’ve yet to grasp the objectives of the petition but of course it would be forwarded to the bus company, the ministry of transport(nevermind, we can still try our luck) and being a tad bit ambitious, the prime minister.

We don’t want to disturb Chung Lern and Nian Ning’s family yet, but we’re trying to understand what are our objectives if a petition should be made. Please give us your suggestions and watch this space.

I don’t want to be seen as overly nosy in the business of someone I don’t know but I feel that the demise of these innocent lives were so uncalled for. I’m feeling my friend’s pain. It could’ve been me, I can’t stress that enough. This is the most that I can do.

For all you know, it could be me, just your average young bus rider wanting to go home.