395 Die in road crashes
Three hundred and ninety-five people died in road crashes in 2,863 accidents nationwide in the first quarter of 2015.
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In addition, 2,442 people sustained various degrees of injury in the accidents.
According to statistics from the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC), those figures were a reduction over first quarter 2014 figures which saw 520 people die, with 3,301 sustaining injuries.
At a stakeholders’ meeting in Accra yesterday, the Executive Director of the NRSC, Mrs May Obiri-Yeboah, attributed the decrease in road accidents to long-term programmes such as sensitisation programmes with bus drivers and the public which the NRSC had embarked on.
She said the programmes were aimed at ensuring that from 2011 to 2020, deaths and injuries would be reduced by 50 per cent, adding that from the statistics given, the commission was on course.
To achieve that would mean stakeholders, such as the Motor traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Police Service, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) and the driving schools, had to come together to achieve it, she said.
Meeting
The meeting, organised by the NRSC and its stakeholders, was aimed at sensitising the Association of Driving Schools (GhanaDrive) to their role in preventing deaths and injuries on the road.
Mrs Obiri-Yeboah stated that GhanaDrive had trained instructors who taught novices to be drivers and, therefore, they had to ensure that they employed qualified instructors who would teach people to be better drivers.
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She said programmes to empower passengers were being embarked on to caution and alert the police to any indisciplined behaviour by drivers because passengers were mostly the victims of road crashes.
Speaking on the theme, "Quality Driver Training: the Key to reduction of the carnage on the roads", the President of GhanaDrive, Rev Erasmus Amankwa Addo, bemoaned the fact that many people who attended driving schools were trained anyhow and sometimes obtained their licences through illegal means.
Qualified driving instructors
The Officer in charge of Education, Research and Training at the MTTD, Deputy Superintendent of Police Mr Alex Obeng, charged driving schools to employ only qualified driving instructors and not quack ones.
He added that the schools should ensure that they provided the instructors with adequate equipment such as cars and computers which would aid in making their jobs easy, adding that their monthly salaries should be enough to sustain them.
He noted that passengers had the right, under the Road Regulations Act 683 of 2004, to arrest and report any driver who displayed indisciplined behaviour on the road to ensure their safety.