'Accra-Kumasi highway Kamikaze-Driving?'
To say the last week of July 2025 was a disaster might be an understatement!
1. On July 22nd, 2025, the Chief of Kusasis in Ashanti was murdered by two motor-bike assailants at Asawase, Kumasi. Two days later, a close associate of his, was also murdered in broad daylight at Asawase.
2. On July 26th, 2025, at Bawku SHS, a student was dragged out of his dormitory by assailants and murdered. That same night at Nalerigu SHS, two students were murdered.
3. Again on July 26th, 2025, Ghanaians were shocked to hear that, music icon Charles Kwadwo Fosu aka Daddy Lumba had died at the age of 60.
4. As Ghanaians tried to process the bad news of the spate of deaths, radio and TV reported on Monday, July 28th, 2025, the death of 16 people in a road-traffic-accident (RTA) at Atwedie on the Juaso stretch of the Accra-Kumasi Highway! The dead were mainly children of the Obogu Saviour Church in the Asante-Akyem South District returning home from a convention at Koforidua.
This accident took me back to my 2017 Daily Graphic article on RTAs titled “Motorway Kamikaze driving?” quoted below. Without doubt, the centre of gravity of RTAs shifted long ago from the Accra-Tema Motorway to the Accra-Kumasi Highway!
QUOTE
Accra-Tema Motorway
In a recent publication, Ghana’s death toll of over 1,700 casualties in the first nine months of 2016 was adjudged one of the highest in the world.
As a little boy living in Michel Camp with my parents in the early 1960s, I had the pleasure and privilege of being one of the early users of the newly constructed Accra-Tema Motorway in 1965, taking rides with them anytime they came to Accra. The 19-kilometer solid concrete road was modeled on the German autobahn and was intended by President Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah to be the first of many such motorways to link major cities in Ghana. It was simply an amazing construction and I loved being driven on it. There were telephone booths at regular intervals for emergencies and solid ground reflectors for night driving. The intended link between Accra-Kumasi-Takoradi was called the “Golden Triangle.” Sadly, the 1966 coup destroyed the plan.
Today in my retirement, even though it is the fastest way of getting to Accra from my home, I avoid the Motorway like a plague if I can. Why? It has become a death-trap with accidents occurring frequently. People drive on it at top speeds overtaking every vehicle in sight, while criss-crossing and zigzagging to avoid potholes! Indeed, some drive like Japanese pilots on a “Kamikaze” mission!
Kamikaze
Towards the end of the World War 2 in 1945, Japan resorted to desperate measures as the end appeared to be in sight for them. She trained pilots in the Japanese Air Force for suicide missions of crashing their planes loaded with explosives on any Allied targets they saw, especially warships. They were the equivalent of today’s suicide-bombers. Today, such is the fury and ferocity of driving on the Accra-Tema Motorway one wonders if suicide is the intention! Unfortunately, this dangerous driving appears to be only the tip of the iceberg of dangerous driving in Ghana.
Indiscipline
Many years ago, I took my driving test overseas in a car with the Manual or Stick-shift gears. Before then, my driving instructor from the Automobile Association (AA) told me that,” if you do not drive in the correct gears, the vehicle will drive you by stalling on you and stopping.” I was also taught Defensive Driving and Road Courtesy. Today, modern technology has replaced manual gear vehicles with automatic transmissions. This has reduced driving to speeding hard and then jamming on the brakes for an instant stop!
Unfortunately driving automatic vehicles demands very little skill/thinking! So drivers can afford to drive with one hand, while making a mobile phone call with the other. Though I do not have statistics to support this, the thinking is that, some accidents have been caused with loss of lives because the drivers were distracted while driving and phoning.
Recently, a speeding car from a minor road to an intersection made me feel the driver probably had brake failure. I therefore honked and stopped. The young woman driving, angrily pointed at her head with the insulting gesture to me that, I did not have any sense! I still do not know what I did wrong to deserve that. She looked young enough to be my daughter.
Bad Roads/Speeding
Sometimes, some of the things we call roads are anything, but roads. On a recent visit to Kumasi for a funeral, I was driven through what qualified more as trenches than a road to Sokoban, a suburb of Kumasi. As for the rural areas especially in the cocoa growing areas of the Western Region and Ashanti Regions, I wonder how we can do this to ourselves as a nation, by such neglect of roads!
Added to bad roads, is speeding and reckless driving.
Way Out
Elsewhere, driving offences are punishable by an increase in insurance premium for the offender. Where it persists, the offending driver has his driving license revoked. Indeed, at the time of writing on Tuesday, 13th December 2017, BBC announced the imposition of an eighty-thousand dollar fine on Ivorian football star Yahaya Toure for driving under the influence of alcohol. Additionally, he has been banned from driving for eighteen months.
Again, very fast buses meant for ambulances in advanced countries, on decommissioning, are imported into Ghana and metal seats welded in them to play the role of passenger vehicles! In the event of an accident, the welded metals do the killing of innocent passengers. DVLA, why do you register decommissioned ambulances brought to Ghana as passenger vehicles? Please ban them to save lives.
Recklessly driving unroadworthy cars by drivers aside, our roads themselves are not car worthy! If the Police checked reckless drivers, ensured that vehicles are roadworthy, and prosecuted errant drivers, casualties from road traffic accidents will reduce. This is on the assumption that, government will provide good and safe roads.
A combination of speeding, reckless driving, poorly maintained vehicles and bad roads make driving very unsafe in Ghana. Unfortunately, the Police do not appear to enforce breaches of driving regulations by arraigning offenders before the courts. Mr IGP, why are so many vehicles with DP and DV plates moving about so confidently?
UNQUOTE
Discussion
I started my October 2024 article titled “Cock-fight to conclusion?” as follows:
“To call last week a week of road -traffic-accidents (RTA)/accidents/violence and drama will not be far from the truth.
1. Atwedie - A RTA on Friday 11 Oct 24 at Atwedie, near Juaso on the Accra-Kumasi Highway involving a VIP-bus and a Sprinter-bus resulted in the death of 8 people.
2. Kwapea - At Kwapea near Obuasi, an Enchi-bound VIP-bus veered off the road into a river killing 17 passengers on Sunday 11th October 2024.
3. East Legon - At East Legon on 12 October 2024, an over-speeding 16-year old boy crashed into a vehicle killing two who were burnt beyond recognition.”
On 22 April 2025, an accident at Amanase on the same Accra Kumasi Highway involving a fuel tanker and a Sprinter bus left eleven dead and many critically injured.
Statistics from the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) and the Police MTTD state that, between January and June 2025, Ghana recorded 7289 road crashes and 1504 deaths.
So, what has changed since my 2017 article on RTAs titled “Motorway driving kamikaze?”
When I heard the MCE on TV describe how the Juaso stretch must be designed/“(dualised),” a word copiously used by big politicians after an RTA at Komenda-junction on January 15th 2020 claimed 35 lives, into a dual-carriage way, I asked myself, “is enough not enough of this joke of routine TV political rhetoric after serious accidents?” As frustrated radio presenters ask, “what is wrong with us? Are we serious?”
Leadership, lead by Example/Integrity. Fellow Ghanaians, WAKE UP!
The writer is a gormer CEO, African Peace Support Trainers Association, Nairobi, Kenya, Council Chairman, Family Health University, Teshie, Accra
Email: dkfrimpong@yahoo.com
