The Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) said it conducted a study in Kuala Lumpur in May to determine the type of cars most likely to break road transport department (JPJ) rules on licence plates and tinted windows.
“We estimate that 58.5% of the cars came from the T20 income group, 25.6% belonged to the M40 income group while only 15.9% came from the B40 lower-income group,” it said in a report today.
Assuming that every car observed was bought through a bank loan, with a five-year repayment plan and no downpayment, it was able to estimate whether an owner belonged to which income category by identifying the price tag of the cars.
Cent-GPS studied 1,256 vehicles entering Kuala Lumpur during the morning rush hour and found that a majority of them bearing illegal licence plates were worth more than RM160,000.
New cars worth over RM160,000 represented 56% of those with fancy number plates, while cars in the RM120,001-RM160,000 and RM80,000-RM120,000 price brackets represented 13% each, and cars worth RM50,000 or less only represented 8%.
Cent-GPS also found that a car’s make and country of origin affected the distribution of illegal licence plates.
Asian cars (Toyota, Honda and Hyundai) made up 51%, Continental cars (Mercedes, Audi, BMW, etc.) made up 33.4% and Malaysian cars (many of them Proton X70s) made up 15.6%, it said.
“It is important to note, however, that we did not observe motorcycles. So, it cannot be conclusively agreed that the T20 are more likely to break the JPJ rules for number plates,” it said.
“Moreover, there is a strong chance that the T20-priced vehicles we observed might have a M40 owner.”
The law on tinted windows states that there must be 50% visible light transmission (VTL) for front row windows. However, many vehicle owners do not abide by this rule, it said.
“When we looked specifically at the price of the vehicles with illegal tint, a massive 52.8% are cars worth over RM160,000.”
However, it said the team did not have the proper equipment to measure tint levels and only recorded cars with fully black tinted windows on the driver’s side.
“With cars over RM160,000 clearly dominating both categories of cars with illegal number plates and illegal tinted windows, we must ask why our society treats the ‘seemingly rich’ with more privileges, allowing them to think that they can get away with clear violations of the law,” it said.