Road Accident Surge
The improvability of human lives cannot be disentangled from their affinity to a gamut of activities, ranging from street hawking to office work. In our individualised quest to make life better as businessmen and women, civil servants, public servants, passengers, drivers and pedestrians, we commute from place to place. The transportation system is indispensable in our daily lives...
The multi-million dollar question is, do we have the slightest flicker of idea of how road carnage has claimed many lives under the veneer of this transportation system?
The surge in road carnage has become the new silver bullet that has cut short many lives than any known pandemic pathology except HIV/ AIDS. According to World Health Organization (WHO), road traffic accident is the second leading cause of death after HIV/ AIDS. Statistics from Annual Global Road Crash, World Health Organization and Real Time Traffic Accident indicate that 1.25 million people die globally through road traffic accident yearly and 3,287 people die daily through the same carnage. 20 to 50million people are injured and or disabled.
Majority of these cases occur in Africa. According to reports by National Road and Safety Commission and Ghana Broadcasting Corporation on 20th February, 2017 indicate that 10,000 cases of road accidents occur every year with recorded cases of 2000 deaths annually and 6 death daily.
This carnage paints a gloomy picture deflationary to a myriad of factors which include: receiving calls whiles driving, non-adherence to traffic rules and regulations, over-speeding, drink-driving, poor or non-maintenance of vehicles, issuance of road-worthy license to unskilled, unqualified and untrained drivers...Majority of our drivers are unfit to sit behind steering wheels as they have become too weak with poor eyesight. Sadly enough, these people drive with unaided eyes predisposing their passengers and themselves to accident. These factors account for the astronomical surge in road traffic accident.
This perennial aetiology put a strain on the economy as money has to be spent in treating accident victims, low productivity (due to loss of lives and those disabled). According to WHO, Road Traffic Accident cost 3% of most countries' Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2008," Ghana spent $288million on accident victims “was the headline of this national treachery.
To arrest this national treachery, government and all stakeholders must institute and enforce punitive measures aimed at sanctioning individuals who do not adhere to traffic rules and regulations, educating the general public on road safety measures, periodic re-examining and training of drivers, application of speed cameras to monitor and punish speeding drivers, motivate and encourage citizens to report reckless driving.
It is hoped that when these measures are instituted, carnage on our roads would be minimized.....
John Bosco Zielley writes.... (One of SAF’s Authors)
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