The Director of Public Affairs of the Ghana Police Service, Superintendent Alexander Obeng, has revealed that there has been a marginal increase of 3.3 percent in road accidents from January to February as against same period last year.
A total of 2,625 road crashes have been recorded with 4,363 vehicles involved.
Motor cycle is leading but there has seen a marginal decrease of 2.16 percent, which is 953 as compared to 974 for same period last year.
Both private and commercial motorcycles have injured 2,603 compared to 2,766 for same period last.
A total 469 Ghanaians died out of road accidents but the number of injuries has gone down due to enhanced enforcement in ridding off unlawful motorcycle use and the improvement in compliance to road traffic laws.
Supt. Obeng made this known in a stakeholder radio discussion on curbing the road menace in Ghana on 3FM‘s Sunrise morning show hosted by Alfred Ocansey.
Ing. David Osafo Adonteng, the Acting Director-General of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), submitted that the development of every country depends on road transport but the more a country’s population grows the higher the risk of road accidents.
“Currently, there are a little over 3.1 million vehicles on the roads in Ghana and therefore the interaction is huge. The kind of people who come to sit behind the steering wheels, their thinking and qualification as well as their knowledge and attitudes are very important factors affecting road safety.”
The NRSA boss prescribes improvement in road infrastructure itself, in terms of length, breadth and width.
“We need to also ask ourselves if the vehicle on our roads are worthy. Ghana has all the laws that should guide and protect the human lives when using the road. Elsewhere, they have minimized this risk because they have become responsible and open up the roads from dual carriage to creating more lanes when they see that the population of vehicles and road users are growing.”
Ing. Adonteng wants more rest stops to be established for drivers embarking on long journey to stop and rest for a while before continuing with their journey.
He further called for appropriate technological systems to be deployed to monitor drivers and road activities 24/7 to catch offenders and deal with them.
The Director of Training, Testing, and Licensing of the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA), Prosper Kafui Semevo, on his part, implored all stakeholders to intensify their efforts in the quest to ensure safety on roads since the effort of one institution will not yield the desired results.
He assured that the DVLA will always analyse the available data to appreciate the causes and reform in order to resolve the problems that are identified.
“Human behaviour is very key and correcting human behaviour takes a very long time. However, that should not stop us putting in systems that encourage people to comply,” he added.
Mr. Semevo warns drivers that having a driving license to drive is a privilege and it is the responsibility of every driver to protect that privilege by abiding with the training and the test they went through to acquire the license.
By Samuel Afriyie Owusu|3FM|3news.com|Ghana