THE National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) has taken steps towards the enactment of legislation to make it an offence to use mobile phones while driving in the country.
According to the NRSC, when Parliament passes the Legislative Instrument (LI), which is currently at the Attorney-General’s Department, motorists will have to find a safe parking area and use their phones or be liable for infringing the law.
Mrs Mary Obiri-Yeboah, the Manager in charge of Planning and Education at the NRSC, explained that the LI would operationalise the Road Traffic Act of 2005. She said the NRSC had begun a sensitisation campaign on the dangers of using mobile phones while driving and indicated that studies the world over had shown that mobile phones were the cause of accidents on the roads.
In some other countries where the use of mobile phones while driving is an offence, hands-free sets have also been banned. The NRSC is pushing for a total ban, for it thinks that receiving a bad message on the phone, with or without a hands-free set, is likely for elicit the same response which could distract the driver.
Statistics on the issue are not readily available but all road users have witnessed the potential dangers inherent in the use of mobile phones while driving. In such instances, drivers pay less attention to what is going on around them, resulting in situations where they drive their cars dangerously from side to side. The use of mobile phones while driving is considered sufficiently dangerous by many governments that they have been banned in many countries, including a few in Africa, such as Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt.
The practice has become a craze in Ghana in recent times, hence the DAILY GRAPHIC welcomes the move by the NRSC to deal with the challenge immediately. The only difficulty is that as a people, we are unable to go beyond the intentions to take the actions that make life more meaningful. There is no doubt that cellular telephony has brought great and new freedoms to users, particularly youngsters, and increased security and peace of mind for their parents.
Although mobile telephony has eased communication challenges, it is important for users to cultivate a greater level of responsibility in the use of the handsets to ensure that the device does not negatively impact on our forward march and compound fatality rates on our roads.
Many people believe that the solution to erratic driving by cellular phone users lies in the use of hands-free telephones. If the driver has both hands on the steering wheel, it is believed that most of the safety problems will be eliminated. But studies indicate that motor vehicle collision results from a driver’s limitations with regard to attention rather than dexterity.
The DAILY GRAPHIC, therefore, calls on the NRSC to hasten slowly in this exercise in order to carry out broad consultations on the intended ban to include insurance and cellular phone companies. It is only when all interest groups collaborate on this matter that a positive response can be obtained from the motoring public. But this must be done with data that can be validated by all. Once the data is made available, Parliament will be able to determine whether or not cellular phone use by drivers should be completely banned, restricted or remain unregulated.
While we agree with the concerns of the NRSC about the dangers inherent in the use of mobile phones while driving, our lawmakers should also try to be fair to telephony companies by not restricting their products without sufficient evidence. As steps are being taken to sanitise the system and halt the carnage on our roads, the DAILY GRAPHIC hopes everybody will lend his or her support to the planned sensitisation exercise so that the benefits of the information age will enhance life by creating a better society for all.
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