I AM deeply saddened by the death of Lee Nian Ning, the beautiful girl who died alongside two others, in a recent bus crash.

Innocent lives are continuously being lost on our roads.

Lee had a bright future ahead of her and so many people who loved her. She was taken away from all of them in a split second. A wrong bus ticket, wrong seat, wrong day and wrong bus driver – that’s all it took to kill her.

I am shaken by the news because I travel between Kuala Lumpur and Sungai Petani every other weekend and I am very fortunate to still be alive.

Like Lee, I am 21 years old, and I too have the whole world in front of me. I take the bus to go home to visit my family and friends. This was exactly the reason Lee boarded the bus.

In my two-and-a-half years of taking long distance buses, I have accepted that buses can break down, can be switched without warning, and even take nearly a day to reach its destination.

It’s not fair for us to constantly live in fear every time we get on a bus, not knowing if we’ll reach our destination alive.

As students, we are not able to afford plane tickets or drive our own cars, which will be safer and more convenient. Even if some of us own cars, we can’t afford the extra expenses that comes with driving up and down regularly.

Even if budget airlines offer cheap tickets, students and the poor are not able to afford them on a regular basis. With hefty airport taxes the so-called cheap plane ticket still burns a hole in our pockets.

This is the reason we choose to take the bus home or to our place of study.

Because of this accident, my friends and I now have a phobia of taking the bus. I don’t want to live in fear. I have a future, too.

JOLENE LAI PEI SHAN,

Sungai Petani, Kedah.

Source: The Star – January 29, 2008