Tackling the carnage on our roads: Another view

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Ghana has one of the world's highest rates of road fatalities per capita. According to National Road Safety Commission of Ghana, four persons are killed daily in road traffic accidents. There is no gainsaying the fact that precious human lives are lost through these accidents and their impacts on society and the Ghanaian economy cannot be overemphasized. A study by the national road safety commission has further revealed that Ghana ?wastes? more than ?1.2 trillion annually on road accident. If current trends continue, road fatalities will be the leading cause of death in Ghana by the year 2010. Various concerned Ghanaians, NGOs, public institutions, technocrats and politicians have talked and opened debates on this issue. They have gone further to reveal numerous factors that can cause road accidents and outlined various solutions to help combat this social canker. The sum of these discourses has been that many factors can result in a car accident, and sometimes multiple causes can also contribute to a single car accident no matter who is behind the steering wheel. Some of the causes (which have also been supported by numerous researches) include but not limited to the following:
Firstly, a road traffic accident can happen when the driver's attention is continuously distracted. These distractions include fiddling with technical devices, talking on mobile phones(whether hand-held or hands-free) or with passengers, eating or grooming in the car, dealing with children or pets in the back seat, or attempting to retrieve dropped items.
Secondly, when a driver is impaired by tiredness, illness, alcohol or other drugs (both legal and illegal), the likelihood of one of these contributing to a road accident is high.
Thirdly, mechanical failure (which includes flat tyres or tyres blowing out, brake failure, axle failure, and steering mechanism failure) has the potential to cause a road accident.
Fourthly, an accident is likely to happen when the road conditions are not favourable. These poor road conditions include foreign obstacles or substances on the road surface; rain or oil which make the roads slick or other road damages like pot holes increase the risk of accidents on our roads.
Fifthly, speed exceeding safe conditions, such as the speed for which the road was designed, and the speed of surrounding motorists can also precipitate a road accident.
Last but not the least, poor road design and layout can also cause accident. Some roads are notorious for being accident "black spots" for a whole variety of reasons, many subtle and not necessarily immediately obvious. These include alignment, visibility, camber and surface conditions, road markings, etc. Finding out the causes of a repeated series of accidents on the same stretch of road is becoming a science in itself but not an act of supernatural powers like witchcraft.
According to the National Road Safety Commission, speeding is a major cause of traffic accidents, accounting for over 50% of reported cases in Ghana. Many authorities emphasize speed as an inherent cause of accidents in itself, though most experts agree that speed alone is rarely a prime cause of accidents. Naturally, a mis-application of speed can be a contributing factor, and higher speed in an accident resulting from whatever cause is more likely to have serious consequences. Critics of the "speed kills" mentality claim that this approach ignores the complex factors that are involved in accidents. In the Ghanaian context, it can be argued that the solution to the above factors amounts to little more than a simplistic "quick fix" or political solution that does nothing to address the true causes of accidents. For us to tackle this social canker, we need to address some of the complex factors by critically look at some of root causes of the carnage on our roads. I guess the discussions should go beyond the conventional ways of solving this carnage. Indeed, this idea has informed this discourse.
Among others, one can argue that the causes of accidents in Ghana can be solved or reduced when we tighten our way of securing driving license, educate our dear drivers about road safety or weed out people with fake license in the system. In fact, these "quick fix" solutions have preoccupied the attention of Vehicle Licensing and Examination Division (VELD), the National Road Safety Commission and our law enforcement agencies like the Motor Traffic Unit (MTU) of the Ghana Police Service for sometime now. Unfortunately, the carnage on our roads has not stopped. The figures keep on soaring. As a country, the soaring figures suggest that there are some caveats that we should continuously strive to address. Some critical questions that are left unanswered are: Why do our dear drivers over speed and are prepared to drive when tired or when the vehicle has developed a minor fault, or unserviced for sometime? Forget about the precious lives of passengers at stake, aren't they putting their own lives too in danger? In our quest to finding a holistic solution to road traffic accidents in Ghana, I posit in this dialogue that it will be great to look for the solutions to the above questions alongside those "quick fix" ones that have engaged our attention for all this while.
In this dialogue, I have chosen to look at the state of our commercial drivers in terms of their welfare. The reason for choosing the welfare of our drivers is quite simple. It is universally accepted that a large chunk of road traffic accidents are due to the human factor. The driver is the major cause here because he has control over most the factors that can lead to road accidents.
In our attempt to tackling the carnage, I further submit that we have woefully failed to address the motivational aspect of commercial drivers. Why? A chunk of our Ghanaian commercial drivers have no job and social security and are poorly motivated in terms of remuneration. In fact, they have no income replacement schemes, in the event of old age, permanent disability, or death. I guess, SSNIT will be the better institution to provide us with statistics about how many commercial drivers are enrolled in the scheme but I can promise you that the figures will be not be encouraging.
Apart from honouring their daily sales, our commercial drivers have no choice but to overwork themselves in order to make more money for their daily "susu.? Some of them have to dangerously cut corners like conniving with thieves to steal and gangsters to rob passengers in order to survive. All these are done at the detriment of human lives. I normally talk to drivers at lorry parks/stations whenever I found myself there. From these commercial drivers, most transport owners will not accept any excuses whatsoever when the daily sales are not met. They are forced to make up the losses in the daily sales even when the vehicle develops fault in course of the day and they have to stop work to fix it. You can imagine the pressure on these poor souls. This has no doubt contributed hugely to the carnage on our roads. Comparing our Ghanaian drivers to their counterparts elsewhere, the latter is well paid plus good social security. Therefore, if the regulations say that a driver should rest after four hours, the driver is more than prepared to do that. After all, that will not affect his salary and pension. The same can be said about drivers in Ghana who are employed in the formal sector of our economy.
From the above discussions, the question that comes to mind is: why do you single out commercial drivers? After all most workers in Ghana are not well remunerated and do not belong to any social insurance scheme. Every Ghanaian worker is important, however, we should not forget that commercial drivers are a critical part of our human resource. They have a direct stake in the lives of Ghanaians. The figures on lives we are loosing and the untold hardships that are happening and continue to befall individuals and families as a result of road traffic accidents cannot be overemphasized. The failures on the part of these drivers to deliver have had and continue to impact negatively on our society. We all bear testimonies to these negative impacts therefore we should show some concern.
Ghana commercial drivers do not have a well-organised union to help them fight for their welfare and other rights. One may not be far from right to attribute this lack of power to negotiate as sheer ignorance. Transport owners hire drivers on the streets and at lorry parks and fire them anytime. Their wages and salaries are decided on individual basis and always at the mercy of the transport/car owners. In most instances, their employers do not contribute to any social security towards their retirement. Most commercial drivers in our communities retire and die as paupers. It may surprise you to know that most of these drivers do not earn more than 50 Ghana Cedis per month. How can they survive? Why do we leave such important people in our lives in such a mess? I think it is high time we looked at this issue holistically.
For us to tackle this carnage on our roads head-on, alongside the other solutions we have been implementing over the years, we have to address the caveat-the commercial driver's dilemma. For instance, we need to look at how to get these drivers properly unionised. This should be part of the message of those who matter in the affairs of drivers and concerned governmental institutions who deal directly or indirectly with them. The Department of Labour and the Trade Unions of Ghana should come out with strategies on how to get these drivers unionized. They should be coached on how to negotiate for better terms and sign employment contracts. This support will help give them the triumph card to negotiate for better salaries and pensions. Secondly, we need to let our transport/car owners understand and appreciate the importance of drivers as to the socio-economic development of our dear nation. Thirdly, transport owners should be part of all road safety education programmes, because they tend to demand unrealistic daily sales, which most often lead to driver anxiety on the road.
You do not normally recognize this when you are chauffeured but most of you who drive will bear me out that it is a daunting task. When you are behind the steering wheel, one needs all the fast thinking, tolerance and attention it deserves to drive defensively. This situation is even worse in our part of the world. Therefore, in so far as we have not been able to clean up this industry, we need to see our drivers as professionals in their own rights. Many people will not agree with me on this but that is the reality. They should be mentally and financially sound in their own rights before they sit behind the wheels. Unfortunately, they are mostly looked down upon because their bargaining power is limited. Meanwhile, we always forget about the undeniable fact that our precious lives are most of the times in their hands. As a society, we have to hobby and pressurize the transport owners to give our drivers a decent remuneration and recognition.
On the flipside, one can argue that the drivers are their own enemies. For instance, a driver may decide to drop a car due to inhuman treatment melted out to him by the transport owner. Unfortunately, you will find the car with another driver within 24 hours. I know that some drivers are fired by their respective employers as a result of the driver's bad behaviour. Whilst appreciating the "bad nut syndrome" in this circumstance, we should not loose sight of the fact that the ?blame game? will not help in this matter. We will make a lot of gains in our quest to fixing the carnage on our roads by combining these solutions: seeking the welfare of our commercial drivers, tightening our ways of securing driving license together with the education of drivers, pedestrians, passengers and transport owners and the weeding out people with fake license in the system. These solutions should be implemented hand-in-hand. Our little efforts we put in this combination may perhaps save some innocent lives and the limited resources at our disposal.
In conclusion, whilst trying to enact and enforce road safety laws, get the right people to drive commercially and put in all measures to bring sanity on our roads, we should also think about the welfare of these poor souls, for our lives heavily depends on them. How many Ghanaians can afford to buy an air ticket from Accra to Kumasi? Until we recognise our drivers as professionals in their own rights and treat them as such, put in measures to make them at least feel important and satisfied at their level, most of the attempts we put in to address the carnage on our roads will just be short-lived and a joke. Folks, lets continue to initiate developmentally-oriented debates, dialogue and trade ideas without recourse to sentiments and personal interests. This is the surest way to build consensus.