From P Sundramoorthy

The concerns voiced recently by certain transport operators and construction industry-linked associations claiming that the road transport department’s (JPJ) crackdown on overloaded vehicles could “paralyse” the construction sector are both unacceptable and deeply troubling.

Such statements reveal a disturbing mindset that places convenience, profit, and expediency above legality, public safety, and ethical responsibility.

Let us be clear, overloading is not a trivial administrative offence. It is a serious breach of traffic and safety laws — one that directly endangers lives, damages public infrastructure, and imposes hidden costs on society.

Every overloaded truck that travels on our roads increases wear and tear on highways, shortens the lifespan of bridges, and raises the risk of accidents.

The idea that enforcement of existing laws should be relaxed simply because offenders have grown used to breaking them defies both logic and morality.

What is even more astonishing is that some associations have gone so far as to request the JPJ to “back off” or delay enforcement.

This plea is not merely a logistical appeal; it is a revealing moral statement. It illustrates how deeply ingrained non-compliance has become. It is a reflection of how, over time, illegality has been woven into the very fabric of certain business operations.

Such requests expose a profound societal dilemma: when lawbreakers begin to demand the luxury of time to “adjust” to obeying the law, it means that the boundary between right and wrong has become dangerously blurred.

The argument that stricter enforcement will disrupt material supply and project timelines is, frankly, indefensible.

What these operators are effectively saying is that their businesses have long depended on non-compliance to function efficiently.

In other words, they are admitting that systemic law-breaking has become an accepted practice within the industry.

This should alarm us all. A society that allows the normalisation of illegality in the name of convenience risks eroding its very foundations of governance and justice.

From a deeper criminological and sociological perspective, this is not merely a transport issue, it is a mirror held up to our collective moral state.

When rules are ignored for too long, people stop seeing them as rules; they become mere suggestions.

Over time, “everybody does it” becomes the ultimate rationalisation.

And when an entire sector begins to rely on bending the law, it signals not just economic dependency on shortcuts, but also moral fatigue where ethical standards have withered under the weight of profit motives.

Just because a law has been neglected or inconsistently enforced in the past does not make it obsolete or optional.

The fact that some operators have been overloading their vehicles for years without consequence is not a justification, it is an indictment.

It raises a far more serious question: what have our enforcement agencies been doing all these years?

If overloading has been rampant, it points to chronic lapses in monitoring, weak enforcement mechanisms, or perhaps even complacency and tolerance towards offenders.

JPJ’s recent action should therefore be seen not as an inconvenience, but as a long-overdue moral correction.

Effective enforcement must be consistent, impartial, and unapologetic.

Industries that rely on transportation must adjust their logistics and cost structures to comply with the law, not expect the law to bend for them.

Compliance cannot be optional simply because non-compliance has become habitual.

From a criminological standpoint, tolerance for offences such as overloading can breed a culture of impunity.

When individuals or companies perceive that rules can be broken without consequence, it emboldens further violations. This is what criminologists refer to as the “broken windows effect”.

Minor breaches left unchecked create an environment where larger offences become easier to justify.

Today it may be overloading; tomorrow it may be falsified permits, manipulated weighbridge records, or bribery to escape penalties.

This phenomenon also exposes the deeper problem of collective moral disengagement where individuals and organisations justify wrongdoing by shifting responsibility, minimising harm, or appealing to economic necessity.

When industry voices argue that enforcement will “disrupt” progress, they are in fact redefining law-breaking as a necessary evil, an extremely dangerous moral precedent.

It is time to change this mindset.

Ethical business practices and road safety are not competing interests; they are complementary and essential to sustainable national development.

If the construction and transport sectors truly value integrity, safety, and accountability, they must align themselves with lawful standards rather than resist them.

Reform cannot begin with the enforcers alone; it must also begin with the conscience of those who profit from non-compliance.

The bottom line is simple: obeying the law is not optional.

The long-term costs of ignoring enforcement far outweigh the short-term disruptions it may cause.

The JPJ crackdown should not be viewed as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to restore discipline, accountability, and respect for the rule of law on our roads.

There is indeed much to ponder both within enforcement agencies that may have been lax in the past and among those who now find themselves suddenly inconvenienced by a law that has existed all along.

When lawbreakers ask for more time to obey the law, we are no longer dealing merely with a regulatory issue; we are confronting a societal malaise, a dangerous comfort with wrongdoing that must be challenged before it becomes irreversible.

P Sundramoorthy is a criminologist at the Centre for Policy Research, Universiti Sains Malaysia. He is also an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.