Dahlan's Test Drive Against Rules

Jakarta (Antara Bali) - The test drive conducted by a minister which had an accident on Saturday was against the rules because it was done on public roads before the car was declared worthy for a drive, an engineer said.

"The test-drive by Minister Dahlan Iskan was against the rules because he did it before the car was declared worthy for drive on public roads. He should have conducted it first on an open square," Said Didu, the general chairman of the Indonesian Engineers Association (PII) said here on Monday.

Dahlan Iskan, the minister for state enterprises, had the accident at around 3 pm on Saturday when he conducted a test-drive on his own "Ferrari" Tucuxi super-electric car on the way from Solo in Central Java to Magetan in East Java.

The accident took place after passing through Tawangmangu hilly terrain that reached up to 1,305 m above sea level.

Didu said all test-drives must be conducted through certain procedures. All designs of new cars should pass worthiness tests before the car is launched.

He said that the tests should include four factors, namely the strength of the car construction (1), the worthiness of its aerodynamics (2), the worthiness of its machines/transmission as well as its emission (3) and it should pass field tests (4).
Didu said that it was only after the four factors have been passed and the car was declared worthy for drive, could the car designs enter the production process.

"The readiness of the car components also becomes a main consideration so that customers would have a spare part guarantee when the car production stops," the PII chairman said. (*/DWA/T007)