- On March 6, 2016, the Honourable Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Barrister James Ocholi, his wife and son died in a road accident.
- On 8th March, 2016, a senior rank officer, who was Chief of Training and Operation in the Nigeria Army, Major General Yushau Muhmood Abubakar died in a road accident.
- Another senior rank officer, the Acting General Officer Commanding 3rd Division in the Nigeria Army, Brigadier General MSA Aliyu was also involved in a road accident on March 8th, 2016.
- On March 7th, 2016, The Deputy Governor of Yobe State, Abubakar Ali was involved in an auto accident.
- During the Easter break in 2016, Nigeria recorded 98 crashes and 77 deaths. Source; FRSC Boss.
- On March 6th, 2016, 18 other people were burnt to death in a fatal motor accident at Buzaye Village in Bauch State.
- On 21st of January, 2016, 18 people were killed in a fatal road accident that occurred in Ikpoba-Okha Local Government Area of Edo State.
- On February 8th, 2016, not less than 30 people died in a road accident; the ugly incident occurred when a trailer carrying over 50 people from Kaduna State tumbled on Lagos – lbadan, Expressway.
- On February 10th, 2016, on the same Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, 10 people died in a road accident at Ajebo area. This happened when an 18- seater bus collided with a truck at the said area.
- On April 24th, 2016, six senior serving doctors from Ekiti State died in a fatal motor accident on their way to Sokoto State to attend the 56th Annual General Meeting of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). However, the other passengers who survived the accident were seriously injured.
Month: October 2016
Road accidents in Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Why? It is because road accidents constitute a menace in our modern days. Decaying infrastructure, over speeding, reckless driving, among others, are deficiencies that all road users including the government must seek to address so as to reduce the high rate of accidents on our roads. It is a pity and quite painful that out of 193 countries in the world Nigeria is rated 2nd highest in terms of the frequency of road accidents.
Although, road accidents happen in both developed and developing countries but it is more in developing countries, most especially in Nigeria. For instance, in April 2016 not less than 142 people died in motor accidents in just 15 days. Source; Vanguard Newspaper.
More so, according to Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) Public Education Officer in 2013, between 19th of December, 2012 and 15th of January, 2013, Nigeria had over 480 traffic crashes and about 1600 people were injured and not less than 280 people died from these crashes.
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the high rate of road accidents in Nigeria is not acceptable because it’s fast depleting human resources. To further justify this assertion, below are the 10 notable road accidents in 2016:
The high rate of road accidents caused by unnecessary speed of some motorists in Nigeria and some other parts of the world is highly irksome and unacceptable. For instance, throughout Europe, over speed is found to be one of the major contributing factors of fatal accidents and also, a factor in the severity of all accidents.
Furthermore, A European Commission survey on attitudes to speed found that:
A significant proportion of drivers enjoy driving fast (36%) and driving too fast is widely recognized as being a contributing factor in accidents (82%).
However, Dr. Kayode Olagunju, Head of Policy Research and Statistics of Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), an agency responsible for road safety administration in Nigeria, made it known that over speed accounts for 68.7% of road crashes in Nigeria.
Without any element of doubt, over speed is a potential contributing factor to high rate of road accidents, not only in Nigeria but also in the world at large. Therefore, the need to reduce the rate of accidents directly caused by speed on our public roads becomes a paramount importance in Nigeria and elsewhere.
Road speed limits spell the maximum speed at which all kinds of vehicles and cyclists are allowed by law to travel on a particular road. It is a maximum speed for motorists and cyclists that is safe for fairly large number of road users on a particular road.
Speed limit is usually written on a traffic sign for all road users to see and to obey, but it is important to note that some motorists in Nigeria, most especially the commercial drivers, do not obey the posted speed limits.
In Nigeria, you see many motorists speeding above the posted speed limit with impunity and with different reasons; for instance, some motorists in Nigeria speed because they assume that the road condition is good for them to speed; some of them also decide to speed because they are very familiar to the road; while others also decide to showcase their speed when the road is free; to mention but a few. Truly speaking, there are different reasons while motorists in Nigeria decide to embark on speed occasionally above the speed limit.
However, no matter the reason why motorists speed, it does not undermine the fact that speed, as it were, is one of the major contributing factors of road accidents in Nigeria and even in the world, at large.
Frankly speaking, there is an element of risk when you over speed; in fact, the degree of risk when you over speed is not minimal, at all. Why? The reason is that when speed is a direct contributor to an accident, the seriousness of such an accident is always high.
Moreover, when you over speed you may not be able to see objects clearly thereby, reducing your capacity to assess a potential danger while making use of the road.
For example, a caption on the page of one of the Nigerian newspaper reads; “Speeding trailer driver kills pedestrian” “…The driver was speeding with another truck when he lost control……and killed the victim….” source: The Punch Newspaper, dated Tuesday, 20th September, 2016.
However, the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), the federal government agency responsible for road safety administration has taken a bold step to enforce the speed limit device on all commercial vehicles in the country in order to reduce the accident rate occasioned by commercial vehicles. When hustling for passengers without any element of doubt, this is a welcome intelligent idea that will surely make the road safer for all the road users.
The primary objective of setting a speed limit in any place is to ensure the safety of the road users, particularly the venerable road users.
Dr. Kayode Olagunju – the Head of Policy Research and Statistics of FRSC, made it known that 60% of road accidents involved commercial vehicles.
Therefore, the enforcement of the speed limit device on all commercial vehicles is a right step in the right direction. The enforcement is the only determining factor for motorists, most especially, the commercial ones to comply with the rule. However, the appropriate enforcement campaign program must be effective and educative by information to the media, interest group and the public at large.
Nonetheless, an effective speed management isn’t just about enforcement of speed limiting devices for all commercial vehicles in the country; it also includes the improvement on decaying road infrastructure from local governments, to the state governments and to the federal government, appropriate signing post at the right places, good road construction, good maintenance of vehicles, education and training. Also, the plans and strategies for enforcement cannot be overemphasized.
A horn is a sound-making device that all kinds of vehicles and cycles e.g. bicycles, tricycles and motorcycles can be equipped with in order to reduce traffic accidents on our roads. It is an important communication device that can save your life and the lives of other road users, if correctly used. However, it is simply used mostly to alert any road users, purposely to keep them safe while making use of the road.
Benefits of having a functional horn in your vehicle
There are some cyclists and motorists that are moving their vehicles and cycles around without equipping them with a functional horn. They took the issue of having a functional horn in their vehicles or cycles for granted but little do they know that the use of a horn has huge benefits in road safety. However, below are some benefits of equipping your vehicle with a functional horn:
- It improves the safety performance of all kinds of vehicles and cycles e.g. bicycles, tricycles and motorcycles.
- It enhances the smooth flow of traffic.
- It is an effective means of communication among motorists when making use of the road.
- It can save your life and the lives of the other road users.
- It is the best means of warning or notifying other motorists and pedestrians of your location, if they have not seen you.
- It can be used to call the attention of any road users when making use of the road.
- It is very effective in reducing traffic accidents
- When a motorist is trying to come into your lane.
- When a pedestrian is walking into a dangerous location unknowingly.
- When you perceive that another motorist is about to hit your vehicle unknowingly.
- It may also be used when you want to turn right or left.
- You may also use your horn when you are at an intersection.
- You can use your horn at a sharp corner where you can’t see the oncoming vehicle.
- You may also give a long blast horn to alert all motorists or road users if something serious is happening e.g. break failure and also to avoid a potential danger e.g. an overloaded articulated vehicle climbing a hill.
- It must not be used as an offensive object:
- It must not be used as an oppressive object:
- It must not be used as a toy object:
The high rate of road accidents in the world at large is highly worrisome. Many people lost their loved ones on road accidents while many others are injured or disabled. Based on the statistics given by WHO, nearly 1.3 million people die in road accidents each year and on average, 3,287 die daily. More so, 20 to 50 million people are injured or disabled due to road traffic accidents.
It is also important to note that road traffic accidents have no respect for anyone or class of people; in other words, rich and poor, young and old etc. are dying in road accidents nearly every day, around the world.
Furthermore, it is also known that road traffic accidents constitute the leading cause of death among the youths. For instance, almost 400,000 people under age 25 die in road accidents every year in the world and on average over 1,000 people die per day.
The major reason for the high rate of deaths on the road is simply because many road users around the world have not seen road safety as an individual key responsibility. This explains why good road safety culture is almost non-existent in many societies particularly in Africa.
The Purport of Road Safety
The regular road users include: pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and passengers in public transport. In a simple language, everybody is a road user. Hence, road safety can be described as the methods and measures put in place in order to prevent all road users from being killed or seriously injured.
Road safety is a great task especially in a society where most road users show lackadaisical attitude to road safety. This may also explain why road safety plan is crucial in road safety so as to ensure the safety of road users.
Road safety plan must cater for the safety of all road users such as:
- Bicycle safety
- Child safety
- Motorcycle safety
- Pedestrian safety
- School bus safety
- Use of seat belt
- Speed prevention etc.
Many people of high caliber and prominent men of worthy character in Nigeria have lost their lives or died young in road accidents involving all kind of haulage trucks. Recently, on June 28, 2018, on Otedola Bridge, Ojodu Berger Lagos Nigeria, a fuel tanker truck exploded killing people and not less than 54 vehicles were burnt. In 2015, a haulage truck caring unlatched container fell on a bus in Illishan, killing 11 occupants that were students of Olabisi Onabanjo University, (OOU), Ogun State and the driver of the said bus. In addition, on July 12, 2016, there was an accident involving a petroleum tanker which crushed 3 cars, not less than 100 people died in that accident in Okogbe area of Rivers State.
It is also interesting to note that properties worth millions, if not billions, were destroyed in different locations across the country in accidents caused by haulage trucks. For instance, in 2015, not less than 21 vehicles, 44 shops, and 3 houses were thoroughly destroyed by a fire accident caused by a petrol tanker that fell off the bridge in Iyana Ipaja area of Lagos-State.
If one single petrol tanker accident destroyed such amount of properties, you can imagine what 2 or more petrol tanker accidents could do to the society. This may probably explain to you why sharing the road with articulated vehicles or petrol tankers still remain worrisome in the heart of many people.
According to former Corps Marshall of Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) Mr. Osita Chidoka, road accident involving tanker drivers and road haulage trucks between January and March 2009 were 2,119 accidents and 301 deaths. The fact that this happened in 3 months is shocking.
With this report, it means on the average there were 23 accidents every day and not less than 3 lives were lost every day.
In addition, in 2015, the Corps Marshall of FRSC, Boboye Oyeyemi, at a stakeholder’s summit noted that in 2013, a total of 21,199 vehicles were involved in crashes in which 1, 495 were tankers or trailer related.
However, from the above given statistics by Corps Marshalls, it is clearly noticeable that the rising road accidents involving tanker drivers and haulage trucks and the recorded deaths from these accidents are increasingly worrisome.
Nevertheless, there are 3 reasons why high rate of accident involving petrol tankers and haulage trucks couple with high rate of deaths from these avoidable accidents remain worrisome to road users, however, here are the reasons:
- Near-absence of both commercial and government driving school for articulated vehicles and tanker drivers.
- An unusual life-style of some truck drivers in Nigeria.
- Poor safety consciousness on the part of truck owners and truck drivers.