Can We Please Heighten The Road Safety Campaign Now?

It has become a sad reality in Ghana that the number of road accidents and its  accompanying casualties increase during festive seasons like Christmas and Easter.

For this reason, there has always been a deliberate effort to increase the activities that goes into road safety campaigns during such seasons.

In as much as we applaud such efforts, we, at The New Publisher, are proposing for such heightened road safety campaigns to take off a bit earlier than wait for the festive season to be in full swing before the campaign starts.

Attitudes  of undisciplined drivers do not change overnight. Waiting for the accident-prone-season to be in full swing before a heightened effort to remind drivers to do the right thing, may amount to flogging a dead horse.

Starting an early campaign is a better option of sensitizing drivers,  motorists and road users in general ahead of the festive season.

We therefore call on the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) of  the Ghana Police Service, the various drivers unions and associations and all well meaning and right-thinking Ghanaians to rise to the challenge.

We call on corporate  bodies and civil society to channel some resources and energies into this crucial task.

It is suicidal to stand akimbo and delude oneself into thinking it is only undisciplined drivers who get killed in road accidents.

No matter how careful a disciplined driver may be, just one undisciplined driver is capable of landing all other innocent and law abiding road users in a disaster. 

An avoidable disaster.

Data compiled by the Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service shows that  the number of road users killed in the first quarter of 2019, from January to March,  recorded a 17.57% as compared to the figure in 2018 over same period.

The issue of road crashes is not one to be toyed with. The accompanying effects are devastating and costly to the victim, the family and to government as a whole.

The United Nations has identified road safety crashes as a health issue that should be given a bit more of attention.

We, in Ghana, tend to focus a lot of our attention on the traditional health challenges like malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and the likes, forgetting that those health challenges can be managed and some even cured.

Whereas the effects of road crashes are irreversible, there are persons living with HIV that have managed the challenge for over 20 years and counting, there are malaria patients being cured each and every day.

We pray and hope for the era when festive seasons would no longer be seen a season characterized by an increase in road crashes, injuries and deaths.  

Festive seasons are a time to celebrate and not a time to die.