For some time now members of the public have expressed disquiet over the carnage on our roads. The statistics indicate that this month alone about 123 people lost their lives through road accidents, while many hundreds sustained various degrees of injury.
Suddenly road accidents have become a major cause of death, relegating factors such as malaria, maternal and child mortality and HIV/AIDS to the background. These road accidents have become both a social and a health dilemma for policy makers in the country.
The unfortunate thing is that the death of these precious citizens of the land could have been avoided if the people behind the steering wheels had taken extra precautionary measures by adhering strictly to road traffic regulations. It is on record that most road accidents are caused by human error such as drink driving, over speeding, overloading, overtaking at unauthorised places and the abandoning of breakdown vehicles on the highways.
The Ghana Police Service, the Ministry of Roads and Highways and, indeed, the government have initiated many interventions to address the carnage, but with little success. Perhaps looking at the spate of accidents so far, it may not be out of place to conclude that the actions initiated by the authorities have not been results-oriented, which means that more must be done to get the motoring public to abide by road traffic regulations.
The Daily Graphic believes that there are no shortcuts to the challenges facing the road transport industry.
The only solution lies in naming and shaming; that is, those who break the regulations must be punished, instead of the present system where sometimes the police look on helplessly while drivers break the regulations.
The decision by the Police Administration to ban the movement of heavy duty trucks after 6 p.m. as part of measures to curb the carnage on the country’s roads can only achieve the desired results if it is implemented alongside existing regulations.
Many vehicles plying our roads are death traps, as they are not road worthy and lack the necessary documentation. But they do business every day with the acquiescence of some police personnel.
Meanwhile, we remember that heavy duty trucks were banned from operating in the night some time ago. It is recalled that the ban was lifted, in part, as a result of agitation from our neighbours in the sub-region who use our country as a transit point.
Already, some heavy duty truck drivers are protesting against the move, saying it lacks any scientific basis. We believe that the Police Administration has very cogent reasons for imposing the ban on heavy duty trucks, so that when the issues are subjected to serious interrogation by members of the public, it will stand the test of time.
It is obvious that everybody is concerned about the carnage on our roads and we believe that Ghanaians will support any intervention that will restore sanity on the roads.
As things stand now, the decision by anybody to travel brings about anxious moments in every home and if this is allowed to persist, every human endeavour, including the movement of goods and services, will suffer and the economy will stagnate.
We share in the concerns of the Police Administration to stem the carnage and we urge our compatriots to join the crusade to make our roads safe.
2 comments:
It is true carnage on our road has become rampant but the decision to ban heavy-duty trucks from operating at 6pm will not yield the desired result. This is because the tipper trucks are run into by other cars when they are stationary. So in implementing the decision that tipper trucks should pack immediately after 6pm, it implies that the drivers of these cars would pack at the road side irrespective of where they are at 6pm. Considering the dimension of our road, it will even make the road narrower and the propensity of other cars running into these stationary vehicles will be higher.
I therefore suggest that these drivers should rather be allowed to operate intensively after 6pm because this is the time that road would be cleared. By odinku.
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