David Osafo Adonteng, Acting Director General (DG) of the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), says they have revised the road safety interventions including the adoption of technology to fight road crashes in the country. He said as part of the intervention, the authority would install cameras at vantage points as well as use vehicle tracking devices to monitor motorists on the road. “We are adopting technology and that is the order of the day across the world, so, cameras are going to be fixed on major highways and selected locations to monitor those who jump red lights. We are going to put speed limiters and tracking systems in all the vehicles so you cannot go beyond that limit and wherever you are we can see, when you are doing wrongful overtaking, we can see you,” Mr Adonteng explained. The NRSA Boss, who said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa during a working visit to the Upper West Region, observed that over speeding was a critical contributing factor to road crashes hence the institution of the stringent measure to counter over speeding. The Upper West Region is the first the DG visited in his regional tour to acquaint himself with the state of operations of the NRSA and to interact with the Authority’s staff in the regions. Mr. Adonteng said the successful nationwide implementation of the road safety intervention technology would make Ghana to be recognised as one of the countries with success stories of road safety management. He said a new NRSA Legislative Instrument (LI) currently operating, had empowered the NRSA to regulate passenger transport services in the country to reduce road accidents. “We are going to license all the transport services operators, know where they are and give them some standards to operate within,” he indicated. Mr. Adonteng added that vehicles caught violating road traffic regulations would be sanctioned saying, “We are going to be hard this time round. We cannot continue to be seeing road crashes in the country.” He said vehicles not fit for purpose and drivers without the requisite qualification such as not having a driver’s license would be barred from operating and the Authority would work with other stakeholders to enforce those measures. He intimated that the Authority had strengthened its road safety management interventions, which had helped reduce the cases of road accidents recorded in the country in recent times. He explained that within the first half of 2023, there had been a reduction in road accident cases from 1,215 in 2022 to 1,189 in 2023 representing 2.14 per cent and that vehicles involved in accidents also reduced from 2,390 in 2022 to 1,984 in 2023 representing 16.99 per cent. He observed that riding without a helmet and underage riding had been a major challenge of the NRSA, especially in the northern regions but they were gradually winning that battle with a reduction in the number of road crashes involving motorcycles. He commended the Upper West Regional office of the authority for working to improve the road safety situation in the region regardless of the financial and logistical challenges it faced. Mr. Adonteng appealed to other stakeholders and institutions that had a role to play in road safety management, including the media to strengthen their activities to achieve the needed results.

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Emmanuel Darko

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