THE escalating incidence of road traffic accidents in the country is becoming alarming by the day. Despite increased road safety campaigns in the last couple of years, the rate at which accidents have been occurring is quite scary.
IT is a truism that one of the major challenges that this country is still battling with is road traffic accidents which Today sees as the most ‘deadly disease’ in the country at the moment.
FOR instance, last week Sunday, March 12, 2017 Ghanaians were stirred by the depressing news of the gruesome accidents which occurred at Gomoa Mprumeim near Apam Junction in the Central Region, and Abesim in Brong Ahafo Region respectively. At least 19 deaths were recorded in both accidents.
YESTERDAY, The Ghanaian Times reported that from January this year to date, 426 people were killed in a total of 2, 445 road accidents across the country. According to the paper, about 2, 523 people also sustained various degrees of injuries during the same period.
INDEED, these avoidable catastrophes on our roads are unpardonable depriving families of their loved ones and the nation of its citizens and their contributions to the economic activities of the country. Continual media reports reveal that Ghana’s road accident is oddly high among developing countries. In 2001, for example, Ghana was rated as the second highest road traffic accident-prone nation among 6 West African countries, with 73 deaths per 1000 accidents.
THE police often cite the poor mechanical state of vehicles plying our roads, failure to observe road traffic rules and regulations by motorists as some of the causes of the road carnage we have been experiencing.
AVAILABLE statistics also show that 60% of road accidents are caused by drunk driving and over-speeding. The latter alone constitutes about 50% of road accidents in the country. The poor nature of some of our roads, poor maintenance of vehicles, disregard for traffic regulations by some drivers and the indiscriminate use of the road by some pedestrian, the statistics said, are some of the other causes of motor accidents in the country.
IN May, last year, the Ministry of Transport and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) said they had developed a Comprehensive Road Safety policy, where all commercial vehicles should have seat belts and enforce its usage to achieve a 50 per cent reduction in road traffic accident deaths by 2020. But do the rising cases of accidents reflect this?
TODAY believes that the time has come for our road traffic law enforcers to roll out implementable road safety plans if the travelling community is to stay safe while on the road.
BESIDES, the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), as well as the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) ,should speed up the construction and repair of roads, many of which are narrow and potholed, at least before the rains set in to compound the situation.
IT is the humble view of Today the country takes another look into the causes of road accidents in this country. There are, of course, other countless factors that we usually fail to address adequately to either reduce or eliminate the road menace. We have talked enough; the time now is to ensure that our talking yield results in order to bring the road traffic menace down.
BUT while on the causes enumerated above, we should also seek to tackle the gross indiscipline on our roads, such indiscipline as talking on mobile phones while driving and unnecessary speeding are dangerous to other road users and the police should act ruthlessly with defaulters. We should also take serious look at the numerous unworthy and old aged cars that ply the roads, particularly the highways. Are they qualified to be on the road at all?
WE have been told time and again by the experts that a high percentage of road traffic accidents are caused by human errors. We cannot continue to lose lives at this rate at the hands of reckless drivers and faulty vehicles which should not be on the roads to start with. It is time therefore for our law enforcers in the vehicles and road sectors to pull up their weights to help save precious lives.
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