In a written parliamentary reply, minister Alexander Nanta Linggi said of the total last year, 1,203 cases, or 5.18%, involved heavy vehicles.

This was a slight reduction in terms of percentage compared with 2022, where the 1,171 cases involving lorries and other heavy vehicles made up 5.73% of road accidents.

“There was a 10.4% increase in traffic on highways, with 1.91 billion vehicles recorded in 2023 compared with 1.73 billion in 2022,” he said.

Nanta cited data from the Malaysian Highway Road Accident Analysis Database System, which is managed by the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM).

Previously, police said a total of 598,635 road accidents took place across the nation last year, with 12,417 lives lost in the crashes.

Selangor had recorded the most road accident deaths with 2,092 people, followed by Johor (2,010) and Perak (1,321).