Tema, Aug. 2, GNA – The Tema Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service has called for attitudinal change on the road in order to reduce road accidents as “most of them are human induced.
“The MTTD has observed total carelessness on the road, people drive or cross the road without any sense of responsibility, “we cannot continue to use the road without respecting safety regulations, this must stop”.
Sergeant Richard Timinka representing Chief Superintendent William Asante, Tema MTTD Commander, stated at the Ghana News Agency, Tema Office and MTTD road safety campaign platform.
The GNA-Tema and MTTD Road Safety Project seeks to actively create consistent and systematic weekly awareness advocacy on the need to be cautious on the road as a user, educate all road users of their respective responsibilities, and sensitize drivers especially of the tenets of road safety regulations, rules and laws.
Sgt. Timinka also cited motorbike riders as major nuisance on the road even though they were equally road users and have equal rights, some ride with careless impunity “it is an offence for motorbike riders to ride in the middle of the road, riders are supposed to follow the flow of traffic”.
He said research showed that even though riders were indiscipline and failed to obey traffic regulations and other forms of road safety, vehicles were killing them at an alarming rate, “as some drivers fail to tolerate riders as legal road users and often wants to push them off-the-road resulting in fatalities”.
He also expressed concern about the attitude of some drivers towards riders who obey the rules and move ahead in the traffic; the drivers would shout and rain insults at the rider who is rather doing the right thing until he is forced off the road.
Sgt. Timinka said riders were not supposed to ride at the edge of the road and in other circumstance, they put their lives in danger by riding in between the lanes which was also killing them.
Mr Francis Ameyibor, Tema Regional Manager of GNA called for tolerance on the road, noting that “some drivers ply the road as if they are on suicide mission, speeding, unnecessary manoeuvring from one lane to the other without giving others signal”.
He attributed the increasing road fatalities to, “suicide drivers and suicide pedestrians,” who put their lives and that of other road users at risk-they drive to either the morgue or to the accident wards through the operating theatre.
“We must abort all suicide missions on the road as a driver or pedestrian, let us all join the campaign to educate all road users to tolerate other users, passengers also have a responsibility to check speeding commercial drivers,” Mr Ameyibor noted.
GNA