The Director of Planning and Programs at the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), Mr. David Adonteng has said the Nature of Roads in Ghana (Good or bad) does not cause Road accident but rather human error is the main cause.
According to him, Human error causes about 90 percent of all motor vehicle crashes, due to mistakes like speeding, fatigue, Overtaken and drunk and distracted driving.
In an interview with Joy News, Mr. David Adonteng noted that these human errors normally occur at the weekend where most people travel for weddings, graduation, funeral and other activities.
The program and planning Director called on the Police Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) to enforce Traffic Laws to reduce road accident and announced to collaborate with the media to campaign for road safety and educate drivers to avoid common errors which cause an accident.
Statistics from the NRSA shows that Ghana loses about 1.7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is over $230 million, through road crashes every year, besides the loss of lives.
Road crashes claimed 2,284 lives in 2019. This marked a significant increase from 2018 where 2,020 died on Ghana’s roads.
The Greater Accra Region had the most road fatalities with 449 followed by the Ashanti Region with 448 deaths and the Eastern Region with 349 deaths.
The Upper West Region featured the least deaths with 49 recorded cases.
The provisional data did not streamline data to cover the newly created regions. Most of the fatalities came in crashes involving commercial vehicles where 925 fatalities were recorded as well as 7621 injuries.
Crashes involving private cars led to the deaths of 627 people and 3,302 injuries.
Pedestrian knockdowns totaled 2,983 with 740 of the incidents resulting in deaths. There were also 4,643 motor or cycle crashes which take into account bicycles, hand carts, tricycles, and motorcycles. The crashes saw 723 deaths and 3474 injuries.
In all, there were 13,877 crashes recorded which involved 22789 vehicles.
Source: Kofi Atakora
