Dr William Ackah, a Senior Researcher of Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI), has revealed that the issue of road safety is dependent on the effort of the public in ensuring its roads remain safe.
According to him, the issue of road accidents is one which must be tackled deliberately. This is because, the country’s roads will remain dangerous if strategic restructurings are not implemented to address road traffic crashes.
“Looking at the trend not only that on 2020 but from 2000, road traffic accidents seems to be on the rise. We tend to have a lot of travel, more vehicles are being imported into the country but the roads remain the same. The conditions of the roads haven’t improved much and road users’ behaviour is not the best.
“And so we will continue to see the increase in road traffic crashes. Unless we put in the necessary interventions, road accidents will continue to rise because safety will not just happen we need to put in conscious effort to make sure that road traffic crashes will reduce”.
Dr William Ackah
Road accidents recorded in the country
Touching further of road accidents in the country, the Head of Regulation, Inspection and Compliance of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), Kwame Koduah Atuahene, emphasized the number of road accidents that havke been recorded in the past 48 hours.
He revealed that these accidents can be credited to wrongful overtaking. This, he explained, could have been prevented if motorists abided by road regulations.
“If you look at the data from January to July, you will notice that about 67% of the deaths are coming out of four out of the 16 regions; Greater Accra, Ashanti, Eastern and Central Regions.
“Wrongful overtaking has been high on the agenda. In as much as motorists are aware of the risky nature of the choices they make. For one reason or the other, they appear unperturbed to create problems for other road users”.
Kwame Koduah Atuahene
Statistics from the Ghana Police Service, has revealed that some 1,706 Ghanaians have lost their lives to road accidents from January to July 2021.
The deaths recorded on Ghana’s roads are said to exceed lives lost to the deadly Covid-19 pandemic that stands at 922 as of August 11, 2021.
NRSA attributes road fatalities to poor roads
In July this year, the Head of Education, Research, and Training of Ghana Police Motor Transport and Traffic Department (MTTD), Superintendent Alexander Obeng, attributed the increase in road fatalities to the state of roads in the country.
Supt. Obeng cited the poor nature of the country’s road network as the major cause of fatal accidents. Additionally, he also blamed the lack of working street lights on the major roads in the country as part of the causes.
This, he revealed, makes driving at night very difficult for vehicle operators.
“When you look at it from January to June, and you also look at it from January to May, compared to the same period last year, you begin to see a slight decline. However, in the period under discussion, there seems to be an increase in the same period last year because all indicators are hovering averagely 25% in terms of incidents of crashes, issues involved, associated deaths and injuries. They are all high as compared to the same period last year.”
Superintendent Alexander Obeng
Read Also: Making your working week enjoyable and productive
