The carnage on our roads – My take
Our roads have become death traps. The number of Ghanaians who are killed or maimed on our roads has simply gone beyond alarming proportions and is also unacceptable.
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Regrettably, in most cases these have been avoidable accidents. Driving, which was originally meant to be fun and enjoyable, is no more the case in our part of the world.
I remember once driving all the way from Accra to Tamale and back all in the name of domestic tourism and sight-seeing.
I have embarked on similar journeys to the Wli and Boti falls in the Volta and Eastern regions respectively. Of course, those days are long gone. Now, before I sit behind my steer, I am tense and remain in perpetual prayers until I get to my destination. Driving in Ghana now has become a matter of life and death!
Yet it does not require a genius to tell us the harm accidents are causing to our socio-economic wellbeing as a people. Fatalities, loss of man-hours and resources expended on recovery all come into play.
Accidents are also inextricably linked with tourist inflows and investments in general. Show me which sane person will, at a huge expense, travel to a destination knowing that his chances of returning safely are very minimal. Ask the Russian Chief Justice if he intends to come to Ghana anytime soon.
Visibility
So much has been written and sung about accidents that any attempt to go the same way risks one boring his readers. Yet, we can only take solace in the old adage that se etre entee a yennyae ekye hye. To wit so long as the head remains in place, we will continue to wear a hat. Simply put, accidents in Ghana have become our way of life and hardly makes news.
Having driven actively for over 20 years with current yearly kilometric coverage of about 30,000 kilometres, I think I qualify to share my observations on the road with fellow road users, especially drivers.
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I have observed over the period that there is something fundamentally wrong with our driving culture which we must address if we are to avoid these accidents. For instance, why would some drivers drive almost in darkness until it is totally dark before they switch on their lights? Visibility is all about seeing and being seen and so if you have better eyes and can see in darkness it does not mean that the oncoming driver can also see you in the dark.
Also it is about time we realised that putting on your lights is not tied to anytime but visibility and so it could be in the afternoon but if it is foggy or hazy then you must use the lights.
Dim lights
Another worrying point is our use of the dim lights. It has almost become a convention that we hardly dip our high lights for oncoming vehicles.
Apart from showing that we are courteous and think of others, it keeps us safe as it does not blind the other driver. Last weekend, when I decided to do a short exercise on vehicles which dim their lights, on my way from Accra to Cape Coast, I made a disturbing discovery. Only 19 out of the 105 vehicles of all types I encountered enroute voluntarily dimmed their lights for me.
There seems to be some impatience on the part of motorists for what reason it is difficult to tell. Overtaking at bends and dead grounds seems to be the way to go now. Overtaking is now based more on gut feeling than seeing what is ahead of you.
Another issue worthy of note is the seemingly low IQ of especially some commercial drivers. If the intention of a Sprinter driver is to overtake every vehicle ahead of him, including a Toyota Tundra, then that driver needs to go for some examination.
Ordinarily, there may be nothing wrong speeding as much as one fancies but at all times, we should constantly be asking ourselves some mental questions. For instance, at my current speed if I should burst a tyre, can I control the vehicle to safety? What about if an oncoming vehicle veers into my lane? That’s why as a good driver you should see it important that you move at a speed at which you can control the vehicle in the event of any unforeseen eventuality, which is possible, particularly on the highways.
Road signs
Then also is the way we interpret road signs. Road signs are meant to communicate the conditions of a road to a driver so that he can make informed decisions at any point in time. A driver who is oblivious of his road signs is not only a danger to himself but other road users.
Directly linked to this is our use of the traffic indicators. In times past, drivers of long trailers would aid a vehicle which wanted to overtake them by the use of their traffic indicators to communicate whether the road was clear or not. Unfortunately that is not the case anymore. Yet, elsewhere on the continent, especially among our Francophone neighbours, this practice is very much in force.
Most of our drivers don’t seem to know how to use dual carriageways either. Vehicles moving at a very slow pace take over the fast lanes preventing other drivers from overtaking and getting back onto their chosen lanes. This causes unnecessary traffic.
Perhaps we should also look at a certain tradition I observed with a British Airforce Helicopter Service which operated for the UN in Sierra Leone in the early 2000. Before the aircraft took off, the last words of the supervisor was “You are carrying 30 souls, or 50 souls on board!” Perhaps, similar exercises on our part would serve as a reminder to our commercial drivers about the huge responsibility they carry.
The irony is that our accident rate has skyrocketed at a time that the quality of our roads have improved. So the question is: “did we go or did we come”?
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The writer is Head , Public Relations and Protocol, University of Cape Coast and a retired senior military officer.
Writer’s email : kofikofi1977@hotmail.com