Weigh in for Transport Ministry in 2026

TO the Transport Ministry, WIM means “Weigh-in-Motion”, a sensor-based system that weighs moving lorries without disrupting traffic. Despite Minister Anthony Loke’s January 2025 announcement to implement the High Speed-WIM system by September 2025, there is no sign of it being launched yet.

Nevertheless, according to a report by a local Chinese daily on Dec 27, the Transport Minister is expected to make an announcement about it this month.

To me, WIM also means “Wishing Integrity for Malaysia”.The link between WIM and “integrity” is clear in a Thai study (2019-2023) by Chulalongkorn University.

For decades, the Thai government had maintained that official weigh station regulations were effectively curbing overloaded trucks. This, however, contradicted public observation: roads and bridges near many weigh stations were frequently seen with severe damage caused by overloaded trucks.

In response, a team from Chulalongkorn University installed WIM systems on key highway bridges. They collected five years of truck weight data from 2019 to 2023 and discovered a stark discrepancy compared to official figures.

The reason? Many overloaded trucks were bypassing weigh station inspections through bribery (cited from a June 2025 article in the journal Case Studies on Transport Policy). In fact, in Thailand, “bribery stickers”, which are similar to the “protection stickers” in Malaysia – as reported in “Zero tolerance for officers involved in ‘protection stickers’ for lorries racket, says Loke” (The Star, Jan 13, 2025) – are a serious problem, allowing drivers of overloaded trucks to bypass checkpoints unchecked.

To combat widespread bribery (at weigh stations and police checkpoints) and enhance enforcement integrity, the Thai government has installed hundreds of WIM and vehicle plate recognition systems since 2024.

Research from other developing countries, including Nigeria and South Africa, confirms that truck overloading is frequently tied to systemic bribery. However, the international community broadly agrees that WIM systems effectively minimise human bias, favouritism and corruption.

A 2020 report by the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, representing 53 member states including Malaysia, also strongly recommended WIM as a key tool to improve regional monitoring efficiency in tackling truck/lorry overloading issues.

In fact, WIM is not a new technology. Since the 1990s, the United States and European Union have used it for weight enforcement. China has also deployed more than 1,500 systems since 2016 for bridge safety, and in the Netherlands and France, high-speed (pre-selection) and low-speed (actual enforcement) WIM are integrated to boost overload detection efficiency and reduce accident rates.

In Malaysia, PLUS installed WIM systems at 19 border-adjacent sites as early as 2006, recording between 3% and 16% overloading during that period.

Research by Universiti Malaya highlights that the WIM system improves enforcement efficiency and offsets road maintenance costs. The current challenges are consistent enforcement and deterrent penalties.

There are also legal hurdles to be resolved. For instance, some EU nations have yet to fully grant WIM data legal weight for direct enforcement. Additionally, to counter drivers bypassing WIM sensors, AI-driven “bypass prediction”, which integrates entry/exit records, point-to-point monitoring and automated alerts, is being researched to identify evasive tactics.

Malaysia’s Transport Ministry should leverage these international integration strategies to strengthen our local monitoring framework.

Whether WIM stands for “Weigh-in-Motion” or “Wishing Integrity for Malaysia”, technical tools and enforcement alone are insufficient.

The Transport Ministry must pair this technology with an uncompromising fight against corruption. Only by reinforcing integrity, accountability and credibility can we restore public trust and the authority of our transport management.

DR SONG BENG KAH

Semenyih