There has been too much blood spillage on our roads.
This makes the unenviable impression that Ghana has one of the highest road carnage in the world difficult to dispute.
All stakeholders, and that is all of us as citizens, deserve a query for allowing the country to record 2,949 fatalities in a single year. Even more harrowing is the fact that this is the highest figure in the past 35 years.
This calls for a national conversation and emergency lest the figure appreciates in the unfolding days ahead of us.
Bread winners, future leaders and others have had their lives cut short through the recklessness of drivers and others charged with the task of ensuring that our roads are safe.
Commercial motorbikes, dubbed Okada, have not been left out from the captured data on the road carnage.
Of course the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), a state body mandated to ensure that our roads are safe, has complained about dearth of funds for them to perform their duty of ensuring safety on our roads.
We do not however think that is solely responsible for the blood on our roads.
Driver recklessness is an area which cannot be altered solely by the NRSA. It must take enforceable sanctions against such recklessness to check this anomaly. Unfortunately, enforcers will always abuse this authority when it is bestowed upon them by taking bribes from drivers.
One of the factors accounting for road fatalities under the category of recklessness is the senseless and daredevil overtaking by some commercial drivers.
Passengers hardly call out commercial drivers when they are reckless.
The relevant state authorities charged with designing roads must take into account the safety of motorists and others when engaging in this task. Some roads are just too perilous, little wonder they have claimed lives.
Given our largely mono-carriage highways across the country, coupled with the sometimes inebriate drivers at the wheels, the recorded fatalities are expectable.
We should prioritise the dualisation of our major highways across the country. This is a formidable solution to the head-on collisions which account for many of the fatalities on our roads.
Some vehicles are just scrap, unfit to ply our roads yet they do. A better means of ensuring that only roadworthy vehicles ply our highways must be unearthed, the current if there is at all, not working.
Periodic engagement between the NRSA and the transport unions should be initiated, it should be made an important segment of the calendar of these institutions.
The Ghana Police Motor Transport and Traffic Department (MTTD) must devise a more effective means of ensuring discipline on our roads. The existing template and the conduct of the enforcers has yielded little that can reduce the carnage on our roads. The Highway Patrol Unit must be revived and equipped to work effectively in tandem with the NRSA.
The ticket system as it applies in the US for defaulting motorists must be tried locally. We know the possible abuse of this but let us try a pilot.
With the commercialisation of motorcycles, there should be a robust regulatory system for their operations.
These have accounted for the mounting carnage on our roads, with more of them engaging in head-on collisions. The situation is worsened by the non-use of helmets and the non-observation of road traffic regulations.
The foregone, notwithstanding, we doubt if something significant would be done.
Those who decide to travel on our highways need prayers because our roads are dangerous and would remain so for a long time to come.
