The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) has launched a public education and awareness campaign aimed at driving down road traffic crashes, injuries and deaths, particularly during the festive season.
The Safe Drive Campaign, which is a collaboration between the NRSA and ZEN Petroleum Ltd, uses high-visibility outdoor signage to reinforce safe driving habits and encourage responsible road use.
With promoting attentiveness, patience and compliance to road safety regulations as its focus, the campaign will leverage road safety signage and billboards strategically placed on major highways, mainly on the Accra-Kumasi and Accra-Tarkwa highways, to encourage safer behaviours among road users.
At the launch of the initiative in Accra yesterday, the Director General of the NRSA, Abraham Amaliba, explained that the campaign was expected to see every stakeholder in the road sector take responsibility for ensuring their safety and that of other road users.
In a speech delivered on his behalf by the Director of Research, Monitoring and Evaluation, Alexander Ayata, the NRSA boss said the campaign was a timely initiative that would augment ongoing interventions to make the roads safer for all.
Context
The NRSA statistics showed that 2,673 people died in road crashes as of November this year, compared with 2,256 in the same period last year (2024).
It is estimated that eight people die in road crashes every day, while thousands of others are maimed.
Research and data linked road traffic crashes and fatalities to speeding and reckless driving; driver fatigue and inattention; non-compliance with road traffic regulations and poor risk perception among road users.
Many experts in the road safety space hold the view that while enforcement and infrastructure improvement play an important role in reducing the crashes, public awareness and responsible behaviours by road users remain crucial to reducing carnage on the road.
It is against that backdrop that ZEN Petroleum Ltd partnered the NRSA to launch the Safe Drive Campaign.
Action now
Mr Amaliba stressed that the loss of lives on roads was a national canker that needed to be crushed with all multi-stakeholder collaboration.
“A country of about 33 million people has eight people dying every day through road crashes. If we do not come together and do something about the situation, we will lose all our human resources,” he said.
Mr Amaliba added that although the government was doing its best to promote road safety, it was important for the private sector to support initiatives that would help to stem the tide.
He called on the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) and other stakeholders to play their part in a collaborative manner to reduce crashes.
No resources
Responding to a question on the way forward, Mr Ayata called for more resources to be made available to support the implementation of road safety initiatives to reduce the carnage on the roads.
He said while the authority had the capacity to deliver on its mandate, the lack of resources had made it impossible to do so.
“As we speak, our officers across the regions are expected to move out to implement interventions to curb crashes, but we are unable to do so because of a lack of resources,” he said.
He stressed that the time had come for the government to prioritise road safety as a national emergency that needed to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
“President Mahama is embarking on the reset agenda, and this must extend to the road safety sector. I do not think the President will be happy to see that more people continue to die on our roads,” he stressed.
Shared responsibility
The Retail Director at ZEN Petroleum, Prince Awuley, said road safety was a shared responsibility and required the private sector to work with the government to curtail crashes.
He said it was in that regard that the company had decided to collaborate with the NRSA to implement the Safe Drive campaign.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh