The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) has admonished both motorists and pedestrians to adhere to road safety measures as a means to reduce road accidents.
Statistics from the NRSA indicate that over 11,000 road accidents were recorded from January to October 2019.
Out of this number, almost 2,000 deaths were recorded.
Addressing motorists and pedestrians at the launch of its road safety campaign for the Christmas activities, CEO of the Authority, Ing. May Obiri Yeboah said her outfit will be sensitizing motorists and pedestrians on how to ensure road safety measures.
“This is to heighten the sensitization of our Christmas campaign to all categories of road users before, during, and after the Christmas and New Year. We hope that this will be a wake-up call to everyone to have a shared responsibility to ensure that we have an accident-free season. We need to reduce speeding on our roads. Our drivers have to be responsible on our roads.”
“Traffic regulations need to be obeyed especially the motor riders to do what the law says. We need to help our children cross the roads safely. And I want to give a little warning to our drivers especially during this harmattan season, this is the time we have the fog coming up. So we expect everyone to have their lights, trafficators and other things working,” she noted.
AMA launches road safety campaign
As part of efforts to also ensure an accident-free festive season this year, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, AMA, has also launched its road safety campaign.
The Assembly will embark on a mass media promotion and an enforcement drive on speeding in the coming weeks to help reduce speeding beyond the posted limit in Accra as part of the ‘AMA Road Safety Mass Media Campaign’.
Measures to ensure road safety
The National Road Safety Authority had earlier assured that it has put in place measures to strictly compel institutions, agencies and all road users to adhere to road traffic regulations in order to reduce road accidents in the country.
The Director of Planning and Programs at the Commission, David Osafo Adonteng noted that the Authority has outlined measures that they will employ to ensure that all stakeholders in the transport sector work hard to raise the standards of the sector to reduce the number of road accidents recorded annually.
He said: “We do not want any road infrastructure to be put up without line markings, road signs, walkways and crossing points because we can’t call that a safe road. So what we are going to do is to use our mandate to encourage or perhaps compel institutions like the road agencies to make sure that they put up safe roads. We are also going to ensure that every driver behind a steering wheel has gone through some form of refresher training.”