Our roads , our graveyard

our roads (feat)

Our roads, our graveyard
By Kofi Akordor
IT had always been an exciting experience when family members accompanied a relative who was travelling to the lorry station to board a vehicle to his/her destination. The children among the relatives did not fail to remind the person embarking on the journey not to forget to buy them something special upon his/her return. With great enthusiasm and joy, relatives waved the departing family member who also waved back, all with high expectations that they would soon meet again.
The welcome party was conducted in similar manner and family members gathered around the traveller to listen to his/her tales of the journey. The children were showered with gifts, which included food items, candies and toys while the adults might be lucky with items like shoes, trinkets and pieces of cloth, especially if the just-returned was a trader and had gone on a business trip in a neighbouring country.
Those days are receding fast. The great expectation that welcomes news of a trip is gradually giving way to fear and apprehension, especially if the route is known for its numerous accidents. These days, it is common knowledge that even before you reach home, the relative you had just seen off might have been dead, torn into pieces through an accident. Sometimes, a husband may call informing his wife to start preparing some fufu and palm-nut soup containing all the meat and fish that can easily qualify that soup as zoo nkwan.
Can you find the right words to describe the state of the woman if she was told a few minutes later that the husband will not taste that specially prepared soup again, because he had perished in an accident a few kilometres from home? Can you imagine the mental turmoil of children who were driven to school in the morning by their father when told that they would not see their father again because of something called accident? What about business partners who spent the whole day with the man on some projects, ending with the assurance to continue with the uncompleted job next time?
Travelling has become so dangerous and unpredictable that until you hear from a friend or a relative at the end, you cannot tell what is happening. It appears the more the auto makers improve upon their vehicles and the more governments invest in good roads, the more accidents we record on the roads. What could be the cause of this phenomenon that defies logic?
There are many factors that account for road accidents. The common ones include: The nature of the road, the condition of the vehicle, the disposition and competence of the driver and the role of other road users. Other road users may include drivers of other vehicles and pedestrians. It has, however, been established that of all the factors, the human element contributes to a greater percentage of road accidents. It is obvious that even if a road is not good, it is up to the driver to exercise caution. It is for the driver to observe all traffic regulations and to be alert for any carelessness on the part of other road users.
It is for the driver as a human being to do certain basic checks on his/her vehicle before setting off on a journey. Unfortunately, apart from negligence, the human error can be influenced by anger, excitement, tiredness, drunkenness, sickness, recklessness, carelessness and incompetence.
In all cases, a lot of bad situations could be avoided if only all the players will do a little bit of serious and honest work. If at the point of issuing a driving licence, the officer at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) office will do a diligent work, an unqualified mentally unstable person will not be certified to drive on the roads. If the inspector at the DVLA will do an honest work, a vehicle that is not roadworthy will not find its way on the roads. If the police officer who is to countercheck the work of the DVLA officer will perform his duties well, the vehicle that escaped the eagle eyes of the DVLA officer, or which was fraudulently passed by the DVLA officer, would have been removed from the road.
Granted that everything was well at the DVLA offices and the driver duly qualified for his licence and his vehicle met the full roadworthiness test, then the comportment of the driver on the road becomes the determining factor.
The truth is that 50 years after independence, most of our drivers, especially those who drive commercial vehicles, are with little or no formal education. Their appreciation of road conditions are, therefore, suspect. Most cannot read road signs and their understanding of certain situations on the road is very limited.
Sometimes one would expect that where literacy is limited, at least the natural sense that every human being is endowed with will prevail. But most of the time, that is not so. So they speed when they know their vehicle is not in good condition, or the road is rough, full of potholes. They overtake when they see a column of vehicles ahead or when they are in a curve.
When alcohol is involved, then the difference between the poor illiterate driver and the professor is not too clear. The only difference is that one may know his or her limit, while the other may not know when to knock off. But the fact that most fatal accidents involve commercial drivers is tempting enough for one to conclude that there is some kind of correlation between education and driver behaviour.
The Valentine weekend was a very bad one for many families because of some fatal accidents recorded. The most horrific one was the accident at Kadia near Diare on the Tamale-Bolgatanga road on Sunday, February 15, 2009. That accident claimed 35 lives.
Another accident that occurred earlier on Saturday, February 14, 2009 on the Walewale-Kumasi road claimed 28 lives. In both cases, there was evidence of human error.
The first accident involved four vehicles — a Benz bus, a Neoplan bus, a Blue Bird bus and an articulated truck. The driver of the Benz bus attempted to overtake the Neoplan and came head-on with the articulated truck in the process. In the confusion, the four vehicles got entangled resulting in the death of the 35 passengers.
In the second, one of the vehicles, a Benz bus, veered off its lane and crashed into a DAF bus. According to an official of the National Road Safety Commission, the driver of the Benz bus might have dosed off. So this was an accident that could have been avoided if the driver had responded appropriately when the signs of fatigue manifested themselves. That confirms the human error that was identified in the two accidents.
In any case, the accident rate in the country is alarming and it does not show any sign of improving. Hardly a day passes without an accident involving deaths being reported in any part of the country.
Incidentally, most of the fatal accidents are recorded on roads that could not be described as bad. That takes us back to the human element. It seems we have undervalued driving, reducing it to a mere mechanical function. That is why anybody who can go through the motion of moving a vehicle and manipulating the steering wheel is a driver.
The carnage on the roads demands that something serious is done about safety of road transportation in the country. According to the National Road Safety Commission, accidents rank ninth in cause of deaths in the country and cost the nation approximately US$165 million annually, which is about 1.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The cost relates to medical cost, damage to property, administrative cost and lost in productivity.
The greatest cost, however, lies in the emotional and psychological pain accidents inflict on children, parents, relatives and friends.
Road safety campaigns are good, but very often the message does not reach the main target group, that is commercial drivers, because of communication gap.
As stated earlier, most of these drivers lack formal education and, therefore, pay very little attention to educational programmes on the radio, television and in the newspapers.
We, therefore, need to start from the beginning — the point of certifying people as qualified to drive. The DVLA itself has made it clear that it intends to make basic formal education as a minimum requirement. It has also decided to make formal training in driving schools as a requirement for obtaining a driving licence. These are good declarations and we wait to see how the DVLA can effect its own policies. Members of the public are sceptical about the DVLA’s ability to carry out this agenda, because some staff of the DVLA, as it is well known, have a hand in most of the unqualified drivers who are plying the roads.
The next is to be serious with the vehicle testing regime. There are people who will confess that their vehicles were never seen by officials of the DVLA who passed them for roadworthy after paying an illegal fee. That means we need to weed out corruption from the transportation sector if we are to get close to improving road transportation in the country.
Personnel of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service cannot escape mention. We know they are seriously handicapped in terms of human resources and logistics to do better on the roads than they are doing now. Notwithstanding their limitations, it is common knowledge that very often they turn a blind eye to infractions by drivers once the right ‘documents’ are presented.
We as drivers must know that a vehicle is a good servant but a bad master. That is why once we sit behind the steering wheel, we must realise that lives are at stake and, therefore, we must exercise due caution and diligence on the road.