Carnage On Our Roads Soaring

Available statistics indicate that more lives are being lost on a daily basis as a result of cars ramming into stationary trucks on busy roads across the country. This needs the government's urgent attention, as it is becoming very scary nowadays when traveling on our cruel roads, with limited road signs and a high increase of negligence and indiscipline on the part of both pedestrians and drivers, with drivers parking at unspecified bus stops due to unexpected faults, and as a result of technical errors, which are no fault of drivers.

This scary development has given rise to the call for a strategy that would deal with the situation. For instance, last Sunday, June 25, 2017, there was a fatal road accident at Dikpa near Tinga in the Bole District of the Northern Region, which claimed 10 lives, including two children and a police officer. The Sunday accident left eight others critically injured. It occurred at about 2:30pm, involving a Wa-bound Ssangyong mini bus, with registration number UW 171-15, from Kumasi that ran into a stationary DAF truck, with registration number AS 379.

According to the Bole Police Commander, ASP David Azumah, the dead included a Lance Corporal of the Ghana Police Service. "Personnel on highway patrol at Banda Nkwanta received information that an accident has occurred at Dikpa near Tinga on Bole Bamboi highway, that some of the passengers sustained serious degree of injuries, and some also died instantly. The patrol team quickly rushed to the scene and found eight occupants of the bus seriously injured and ten passengers dead, including two children and a police officer, No. 47593 G/L/Cpl Jakper B. Yamdauk, with Wa Regional Highway Patrol," ASP Azumah recounted.

The injured, the police report revealed, were rushed to the Bole Government Hospital for treatment, and the bodies of those who lost their lives deposited at the hospital morgue awaiting identification and autopsy.

In another development, ten people lost their lives in a gory accident on the Winneba-Cape Coast highway in the Central Region on Monday night around 7:30pm. The sad incident occurred at Okyereko in Gomoa West near Winneba.

Several others also sustained various degrees of injuries and were rushed to the Winneba Government Hospital. According to eyewitnesses, three vehicles - a Hyundai Grace commercial vehicle, a pickup and a Mercedes Benz - were involved in the accident

In other related development, another damning incident occurred yesterday in the Western Region, which involved a 21-year-old, Nana Boroo, who died on the spot at Dompoase near Wassa Akropong, when his motorbike ran into a tipper truck parked beside the road.

Our investigation revealed that the tipper truck, which was parked in the sharp curve of the road, has been there for some time now, as the police looked on unconcerned.

This paper's findings revealed that many of our roads, especially our highways or major roads, which are meant for fast moving vehicles and long distance journeys, have been turned into parking lots and garages for immobilised or stationary vehicles, causing a lot of havoc.

Vehicles that break down on our roads are left, sometimes for days, and when mechanics are eventually brought in to repair them, they repair them right there on the roads, turning entire lanes into garages. As the immobilised vehicles sits, waiting to be repaired (almost never to be towed), the only notice that passing vehicles get are a few tree branches placed and scattered a few yards or metres away from the stationary vehicle.

Obviously, these tree branches do not illuminate in the dark, thus heightening the danger for a vehicle travelling in the same lane, as the immobilised vehicle will run into the parked vehicle. This, sadly, is how hundreds and thousands of lives are lost on Ghana's roads. These "parked" vehicles, which have commandeered entire lanes unto themselves, have become death traps for unsuspecting drivers.

The tragedy, according to an analyst with knowledge of the causes of road accidents, is not that this problem exists, the real tragedy is that no solution appears in sight, year after year after year. And yet, rather than think about solving this real problem, we divert attention into some prejudice-driven discrimination that may or may not have much to do with this problem of immobilised vehicles or of accidents on our roads generally.

It will be recalled that a former President, the late Prof. John Atta Mills, once advocated for ways to remove stationary vehicles, which had been identified as a major cause of accidents.

He was interacting with a delegation of the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU). The late President Mills expressed dissatisfaction at the presence of stationary vehicles, especially on the Accra-Kumasi road, and said despite mechanical faults, the lack of discipline and presence of such stationary vehicles had contributed greatly to the accidents.

The delegation was at the Castle, Osu to congratulate the President and his Vice, Mr John Dramani Mahama, on ascending to the two highest political positions of the land.

Following the many road accidents, some of which claimed the lives of many important personalities, and prominent among them are the late Ferdinand Ayim, the then Special Assistant to Jake Obetsebi Lamptey of blessed memory, Kwame Owusu Ansah, renowned actor, three eminent Korle Bu Urologists, and a former Akwatia MP, Dr Asare, among others, many right thinking Ghanaians are calling for a system to curb the menace before something horrible happens.

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