The Savannah Regional Office of the National Road safety Authority (NRSA) has taken pragmatic steps to ensure that the incidents of Road crashes involving disabled vehicles on the corridors are minimized or eliminated in the Region.
It will be recalled that most of the gory accidents that have claimed several lives at a go, mostly involve vehicles that are left in the middle of the roads due to mechanical faults. Most of these are without the appropriate warning signs to alert motorists or the warning signs are placed too close to the disabled vehicles making its intended effect minimal or useless.
Addressing drivers on the Damongo-Sawla Highway, the Regional Head of NRSA, Savannah Region Safianu Abdul-Rahaman advised drivers, of mainly the heavy-duty trucks to place the warning triangles in front of and behind the stationary vehicle to warn approaching drivers. He further educated drivers to always place the warning signs 45m before the hazard when in urban centres where speed limits are lower but on highways outside human settlements, the signs should be 145m before and after the hazard to be effective and also prevent motorists from running over them.
Those who did not have the warning triangles were made to go and buy as part of the exercise. There vehicles were also inspected for retro-reflective tapes as it serves as a secondary layer of ensuring visibility of these vehicles especially at night. Regulation 80 of LI 2180 of Road Safety Regulation 2012 enjoins all passenger and good carrying vehicles that have a gross weight of 3.5 tonnes and above to fit retro reflectors on them.
Safianu also advised drivers to take regular stops to keep alert, avoid speeding and overtake when it is absolutely safe to do so.
NRSA is often criticized for being reactive and come to the fore only when the harm has been done. This proactive move by the savannah team is commendable and worth emulating by others while the authorities take steps to figure a way to tow these broken-down vehicles off the roads
The savannah Region has recorded a total of 29 deaths from January 2023-October 2023 from 60 crashes involving 92 vehicles. Half of these fatalities was attributable to crashes involving motorcycles while commercial and private vehicles accounted for the other half.
Nine pedestrians were knocked down, out which 4 lost their lives. A total of 215 have also sustained various degrees of injuries during the same period.
This year’s figures show a significant improvement compared to last year in fatalities and number of crashes and a marginal decline in persons injured. Data from January-September of 2022 and that of 2023 revealed a 30 %, decline in persons killed; a 29% decline in number of crashes and a 5% decrease in persons injured.
Mr. Safianu attributed this performance to the efforts of all stakeholders and urge them not to lose their guard, especially these festive seasons so that the year will pass by with no further lost of lives or injuries due to crashes.
