The Principal of Jackson College of Education has called for strict enforcement of road safety regulations to address the needless deaths on our roads.
Theodosia Jackson said the carnage on the roads could only be attributed to wanton indiscipline and weak application of regulations. She charged institutions mandated to check the menace to step up their games.
According to her, there is too much indiscipline relative to observance of road traffic regulations by drivers resulting in preventable accidents that claim thousands of lives annually.
Mrs Jackson believes indiscipline and human error account for about 95 per cent of road accidents; she stressed the need for drivers and other road users to eschew recklessness while on the road.
She recounted an incident where a tanker driver almost crashed her husband to death in traffic recently just because he (driver) was on the phone while driving.
The tanker driver, according to her, lost concentration and rammed the heavy-duty vehicle into the rear of her husband’s Toyota Land Cruiser, causing extensive damage to the vehicle in the process.
The rate at which people are innocently dying through road accidents, she noted, is frightening and called for concerted efforts from all relevant stakeholders to tackle the problem head-on.
She charged the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, (DVLA) to constantly clamp down on vehicles without roadworthy certificates, which she believes, is one of the surest ways to make the use of our roads safer.
“Sometimes you see rickety vehicles that are obviously not worthy for the road but have the certificate and you wonder how such vehicles could go through certification by the DVLA”, she stated.
Mrs Jackson also bemoaned the sheer indiscipline exhibited by tricycle riders who behave they are exempted from observing traffic regulations.
In an interview with the media, the Principal lamented the use of the shoulders of the roads by motorists in their bid to evade traffic.
“This unhealthy practise by some motorists who encroach on the side roads whenever there is traffic. These encroachers include some drivers of four-wheel drives, motorbikes and tricycles,” she said.
She stressed that they flout the regulations with so much impunity thereby causing all sorts of accidents, leading to the death of innocent victims with others maimed for life.
She called on the National Road Safety Commission to intensify public education on road safety to halt the alarming rate at which people are needlessly dying on the roads.