Effective January, next year, the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) will start a compulsory vehicle towing policy to expeditiously remove breakdown vehicles that continue to devour lives on the country’s roads.
The mandatory vehicle towing policy provided for in the updated Road Traffic Regulations, 2026 (L.I 2519) and the Road Traffic (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act 1153), requires vehicle owners to subscribe to a private towing service or purchase an insurance policy that includes towing cover.
The Director-General of the NRSA, Abraham Amaliba, explained to the Daily Graphic that the authority had intensified stakeholder engagement to ensure that the policy was rolled out in a comprehensive manner to address the menace of abandoned vehicles on the road.
Mr Amaliba explained that a mobile application was currently being developed to onboard all towing companies so that vehicle owners could access for prompt towing of their cars any time they broke down on the road.
“Just like Uber, when your car breaks down in the middle of the road, you do not need to call a particular towing company that may be far from you.
All you need to do is to go to the platform and look for the nearest towing vehicle to pick the vehicle up,” he said.
Abandoned vehicles
The interview with the NRSA Director-General last Wednesday, October 7, followed the observation of widespread abandoned vehicles on the country’s roads and the safety threats it posed to members of the travelling public.
For more than two years, the Daily Graphic has been observing a worrying trend of breakdown vehicles on the country’s roads causing many deaths.
Regulation 102 (1) of the Road Traffic Regulations, 2012 (L.I 2180) states: “An owner of a vehicle or person in charge of a motorcycle or trailer who causes or permits the motorcycle or trailer which breaks down on the road to be left on the road shall give notice to the nearest police station or authorise a towing service provider within an hour, if the breakdown vehicle or trailer is located within a built-up area; and within two hours if the breakdown vehicle or trailer is within a place other than a built-up area.”
Regulations 214(2) of L.I 2180 also states: “Where a motor vehicle is for any reason stationary on the roadway or the shoulder of a public road, the driver of such vehicle shall display or cause to be displayed at least one emergency warning sign in the manner contemplated in sub regulation (4).”
Despite the existence of the law, some breakdown vehicles are still left on the road for days and sometimes months without being cleared.
Checks by the Daily Graphic at some sections of the 696-kilometre Eastern Corridor Road that stretches from Tema in the Greater Accra Region through the Eastern, Volta, Oti and the Upper East regions indicate that a lot of vehicles, many of them trucks, are either left on the shoulders or in the middle of the road.
Sections of the N1 Highway such as the Accra-Sogakope road, the 145-kilometre Accra-Cape Coast road, 187-kilometre Aflao-Accra road, and the 130-kilometre Takoradi-Elubo road are replete with disabled vehicles.
Similarly are the 126-kilometre Kumasi-Techiman road on the N10 highway; the Kintampo-Tamale roads, Accra-Suhum, Tarkwa-Bogoso-Ayafuri and Kumasi-Tamale roads.
Contrary to Regulations 214(2), some vehicle owners use vehicle tyres to warn motorists of disabled vehicles ahead of them.
While vehicle owners continue to flout the road traffic regulations, statistics from the NRSA revealed that disabled vehicles on the road have caused many road crashes and claimed many lives over the years.
The Daily Graphic’s analysis of road traffic statistics from the NRSA revealed that over the past 35 years (1991 to 2025), 63,599 persons died from reported road crashes across the country.
Additionally, the NRSA’s analysis of road crash statistics over a 10-year period (2012 to 2022) revealed that out of the 23,490 people who were killed in road crashes, 687 of the deaths occurred because of abandoned vehicles on the road.
That constitutes nearly three per cent of the total deaths through road crashes within the period.
When put against the 63,599 persons killed in road crashes over the past 35 years, it means that 1,908 of those deaths could have been avoided if disabled vehicles on the shoulders of roads were towed as required by law.
Vampire vehicles
In 2010, a gory road crash claimed 20 lives at Dawa in the Greater Accra Region when a Metro Mass Transit (MMT) bus ran into a stationary truck at 4 a.m.
Although crash investigations by the NRSA established fatigue driving as the immediate cause of the crash, it added that the remote cause was the presence of a disabled truck on the shoulder of the highway without adequate warning.
On January 20, 2022, four persons died on the spot, while 39 others sustained varying degrees of injury in an accident that occurred at Tuobodom in the Techiman North District on the Kintampo-Techiman Highway in the Bono East Region.
The crash occurred when a KIA Grandbird bus from Bolgatanga to Kumasi ran into a disabled DAF articulated truck in front of the Tuobodom Senior High School.
Again, on March 13, 2022, a loaded mini-bus crashed into the side of a disabled vehicle on the shoulder of the road at 5:30 a.m. at Kwahu Oframase in the Eastern Region resulting in the death of five persons.
Here again, the NRSA’s crash investigations cited speeding and wrongful overtaking as the immediate cause of the crash but added that the abandoned truck on the shoulder of the road, which had not been towed at the time, caused the deaths.
On March 13, 2022, 11 people were also killed at Asuboi in the Eastern Region when a loaded high-occupancy bus crashed into the rear of a fallen container at 3:30 a.m.
Again, speeding and fatigue driving led to the crash which was exacerbated by the breakdown of a truck on the shoulder of the road.
Drivers reaction
In October, 2016, the government, acting through the NRSA, signed an agreement with the Road Safety Management Services Limited (RSMSL), a private entity, for the towing of breakdown and abandoned vehicles on roads.
The NRSA announced that effective July 1, 2017, vehicle owners were required to pay a mandatory road safety fee each time they went to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) to renew their roadworthy certificates.
However, that policy was resisted by members of the public due to the lack of adequate engagement.
There is currently no effective way of promptly towing disabled vehicles from the road to prevent crashes and fatalities.
When the Daily Graphic spoke to some drivers about the new towing system that would be reintroduced, they said the policy in its current form was good and would help to address the phenomenon of breakdown vehicles.
The driver of a 207 mini-bus, Emmanuel Arko, who plies the Accra-Cape Coast road, said if the policy was properly implemented, it would help to address the worrying phenomenon of breakdown vehicles on the road.
“For me, I think steps being taken by the government to start towing vehicles that breakdown on the road is great.
We face a lot of risks from these abandoned vehicles on the road.
If you are not very careful, you will run into the abandoned vehicles, especially during the night,” he said.
Joseph Magan, a truck driver who plies his trade on the Accra-Kpassa road, said the implementation of towing policy would be a huge relieve for obedient drivers.
“Every week, I carry passengers from Kpassa to Accra.
For every trip, I spend almost 10 hours.
I drive pass faulty vehicles left on the shoulders of the road all the time; it is dangerous for us because there are no warning signs to tell other drivers that there is danger ahead,” he said.
Meanwhile, Konja Nlandon, a cargo truck driver, blamed the frequent breakdown of their vehicles on the bad nature of our roads.
“The roads are very bad.
Sometimes, when the vehicle breaks down, you cannot readily get a good mechanic to fix it for you early enough.
At times, we have to leave the truck there and come all the way to Accra to buy some parts before we can get it back on the road,” he said.
